Last week, I had a patient (let's call her Mary) come to see me because she noticed that she was having difficulty seeing the board at the front of the class clearly. Mary was in her early 30s and mentioned she had worn glasses for a little while as a teen but never thought they helped very much.
Turns out that our friend Mary has a prescription with high astigmatism in both eyes. While many of my near-sighted friends and patients can attest that their vision progressively gets worse throughout their teenage years and into their twenties, astigmatism is generally present from childhood and remains relatively constant throughout our lives. (Learn more about astigmatism in the "All Kinds of Blurry" post)
Why is this important? This means that since Mary was a child, her brain has been receiving blurry images. And our mushy, emotion-filled noodle is a very picky person. If it sees blurry images (or double images, for that matter), it will stop forming connections with the eye that it dislikes (in Mary's case, that was both of her eyes!).
This process is called Amblyopia. If we catch these types of high prescriptions before the age of 7, its usually simple enough to reverse the process and convince our gray and white-mattered friend to start liking the patient's eyes again. Unfortunately, in a case like Mary's there is not too much to be done. At this point, not glasses or contacts, not even lasers will be able to significantly improve her vision.
But this doesn't mean we don't try! A lower prescription was given that did mildly improve vision and we hope that Mary's eyes (and brain) will adapt with time.
What is the moral of the story? Kids should get their eyes examined early and often to catch high prescriptions or changes in prescriptions and to avoid amblyopia!
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My daughter is 15, and has had glasses for astigmatism once but then her vision improved & she no longer needed them. Now, within the course of a few months, her vision has gone so blurry that she cannot see the 20/80 line at the eye dr. The one strange thing is that if they show her one letter instead of a row of letters, she can see 20/20 in either eye. Her eyes also go black several times a day. Usually this only lasts a few seconds, but has lasted for nearly two minutes on one occasion. We've been through MRIs, EEGs, echo cardio grams... No answers. Very scary & frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI was diagnosed with -1.25sph -0.50 cyl x 10 right eye and -1.25 sph -0.50 cyl x 5 left eye at 18 to 19 years of age The correction accordiing to the doctor is 20/20 right eye and almost 20/20 for the left. The nearsightedness is corrected but the sparkling bananas comming from lights especialy at night is not corrected but just becomes a smaller straight line. I have done corneal topography to make sure there is no serious problem and it came out fine. The doctor that carried out the topography said that big pupils cause the problem. To finish I was once examined at 16 years of age from another doctor and the sight was 20/20 for both eyes without correction. The doctor that prescribed me the glasses said that I my degrees are slightly higher and I should wear those for my eyes to get used and increase the degrees
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Been reading a lot about getting past my blurry vision. Thanks for the info here!
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