Continue
Vision Therapy play an important role in the rehabilitation effort following a traumatic brain injury such as stroke, aneurism or trauma due to impact. Patients who suffer from brain injury such as strokes, tumors or head trauma, neurosurgery, or aneurysm often sustain long-term functional deficits. These deficits include difficulty talking (aphasia), walking, poor fine motor control, and diminished cognitive abilities.
Vision problems are often overlooked during the initial stages of treatment for traumatic brain injuries. Often times the problems are initially hidden, which further delays treatment. Many brain injury patients are left with double vision, binocular vision difficulties and severe accommodative (focusing) problems.
Peripheral vision loss, or visual field loss, refers to a portion of our visual world which has been removed, essentially a large blind spot. The position and magnitude of this blind spot places the person at increased risk of further injury and harm from bumping into objects as well as being struck by approaching objects. Various treatments are available to help people deal with visual field loss. Treatment may involve scanning and tracking exercises into the area of loss as well as prisms and special glasses to help with orientation and mobility concerns. Remediation requires effort, time and patience on everyone involved with the situation.
Double vision is a serious and intolerable condition that can be caused by strabismus (misalignment of the eyes), ophthalmoplegia (paralysis of a specific eye muscle limiting eye movements), gaze palsy (inability to gaze into certain directions), and decompensated binocular skills in patients with brain injury, stroke and other neurologically compromising conditions. Prisms, lenses and/or vision therapy can often help the patient achieve fusion (alignment of the eyes) and alleviate the double vision.
