Optic Nerve Drusen

[lizzy1985]

My eye doctor just told me that  I have Optic Nerve Drusen. Are you born with this or its it develope over time?
Lizzy

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

It can happen both ways. Use the "images" feature of Google and search optic nerve drusen for pictures of what they look like.

There are several typesw of "drusen" on the eye: optic nerve drusen which are described as hard or soft and are part of macular degeneration.  Optic nerve drusen look like rock candy crystals in the optic nerve. The important things are that it can cause an optic nerve to look swollen (papilledema), obscure or simulate glaucoma and in rare cases can cause loss of peripheral vision enough for the patient to notice. It is often heredity. Sometimes the drusen are buried in the optic nerve and only show up with OCT testing.

A baseline visual field and optic nerve photographs are a good idea to do.

JCH III MD  Eye MD

[lizzy1985]

thanks

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

You are welcome.
JCH IIIMD

[Kinnonent]

I have Optic Nerve Drusen and my doctor tested my peripheral vision (which I have done lots of times in the past) to which he said, the test results "weren't good" and that I needed to come back in a couple weeks to have the test again. When hearing news like this I get kinda scared and I can't ask questions and pretend like I am ok... so I didn't ask anything. Can anyone tell me a little more?
Before the test he said I needed to have the test regularly because of the risk of glaucoma. Are these results correlated?

Thanks for any help!!!

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

Read this article:   http://www.emedicine.com/OPH/topic615.htm

Then use Google IMAGES and search optic nerve drusen to see what they look like.

Optic nerve drusen interfers with the best for glaucoma so often the visual fields are NOT accurate.

JCH IIIMD