temporary blindness

hey there, my mum has had a bout of temporary blindness in both eyes 3 different times now, once was about 5 years ago and the other two were about 3 months ago and 4 weeks ago. she says she feels compleatly normal while this happens but she cant see anything, it just goes like yellow or bright lights. The bout lasts for about 20mins approx. What could this be???? I hope its nothing serious and she dosnt want to go to the dr because she dosnt want to here anything bad. Could you please give some advice, thanks


This discussion is related to Temporary Total Blindness.

[C124Ace]

My husband has just been in hospital for 5 days.  Blind in one eye and other eye had started to go that way.   Scary.   Because of his history of having 2 TIAs they thought it was a stroke to the orbit.  However, after they took a 'picture' of the BACK of his eye they found severe EDEMA behind left eye and moderate on right.     Biopsy done to temporal (left side of head).  Diagnosis:  GCA (Giant Cell Artiritis).    Under medical supervision, he was given (via IV) 500 mg of Prednisone daily until his eyesight improved.

Before diagnosis, we w/told that (1) his eyeball was good; (2) behind eye bad;  (his eyesight was definitely getting worse. (3)  they checked presssure and all that in eye and found OK; (4)it was not until they took the 'picture' behind the eye/orbit, that they found problem

Good luck.  

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Hello.

Transient loss of vision can be seen with a number of neurological conditions including intracranial space occupying lesion (brain tumor). The only advice I can give is that she should consult a neurologist as soon as possible.

Does she have any other physical illness such a hypertension, diabetes, etc.?

Regards

[spongebob98]

thanks for the comments, yes diabetes is very strong in the family.

[denisemaccardo1mia]

Your conditions could be a disease called pseudotumor cerebri.  My daughter has this disease.  Although this disease is usually seen in women ages 20 to 55 case have been found in men.  Also, my niece who is only ten years old has recently been diagnosis and she did not fall into the age catorgory above.  The disease is very rare. Only 12,000 people in the US have it.  It has symptoms that are not always the same in everyone.  It has headaches, sometimes neck pain assosiated with it.  It cause the optic never to fill with fluid and cause temporary to perminate blindness.  Other symptoms that occur are blurred vision at first.  The disease is very hard to detect and opthmalogist first found my daughters.  She sees a specailist now who saved her vision.  He was a neuro-opthmalogist.  There are very few Neuro-opt.  So look hard and see this specialist.

Good Luck to you hope this helps.