Vision

[worriedness]

Can glaucoma cause retinitis pigmentosa?

[worriedness]

So I am having a problem that my glaucoma specialist has is baffled by. Lately, I have been seeing blank spots in my vision. It is in the left and the right eye and all over the peripheral. The thing is I don't know if they have always been there or just started appearing.  I've had an OCT, retinal fiber analysis, dialated eye exam, and a visual field(last week) within the last year and the doctor said everything looked fine. No new defects on visual field(though the blank spots are mostly outside the 30 degree that the visual field tests). In addition, my Glaucoma has been said to be under control because of all the test tooken and also my pressures which went from the high twenties to the sixteens. But at the same time these thing are still happening. My doctor has referred me to a neurologist. In addition the biggest blank spot in my eye suddenly showed up one morning and got smaller. This happened a year ago and is still prest today. I occasionally (several times a day) get bright spots in my vision that last only seconds to a minute.

Questions:
Could this be normal? I heard that the brain can naturally have these spotes corresponding to the vision.
I've had migraines and bright spots in vision. Could this be the cause of the blank spots?
Though it looks like my glaucoma is controled, Could the glaucoma be the cause still?
Thank you for your help.

[Christopher C Shen, MD]

Glaucoma is a disorder of the optic nerve, the structure connecting the eyeball to the brain.  Retinitis pigmentosa is a disease of the retina.  While both entities can coexist, there is no correlation with either one causing the other, as they affect completely different structures in the eye.