Partial loss of vision...?!

Partial loss of vision...?

My mom lost part of her vision in her left eye today. She said it slowly got worse from the outside of her field of vision in. Within an hour or so it got better. We obviously went to the dr who ran lots of tests and all but he still can't really tell us what happened or why. Anybody else experience this? Her BP is fine by the way...

4 weeks ago
They did a full glucose tolerance test for diabetes, no results yet... No head trauma. The weird thing is it was just one eye. Seems really strange to us. The eye dr. just wants her to follow-up with her primary care Dr. as usual.

The most likely answer to this is that she had an ocular or ophthalmic migraine.

An ophthalmic migraine occurs when there's a loss of vision, usually on one side, that slowly moves towards the center or towards the outside or up or down to a corner, always on one side. The edges of the 'blind spot' or scotoma are saw tooth like and it's almost like there's this irregular flashing that flickers and flickers. It can start centrally and be noticed by having problems reading. Then one notices the little zigzag flicker and one knows it's just another one of those ocular migraine things.

It's on one side, not one eye. If it's just an eye, a single eye, it's not an ocular migraine. It could be a retinal migraine which would indicate a spasm of a vessel within the retina in one eye. This is really rare, where the ocular migraine type is really common.

The problem is in the back of the brain, the occipital cortex and there's a wave of depolarization that moves over one side of the brain. It stops and it's done. There's usually no pain associated with it, but some people feel nausea or dizzy, and others do get pain and may progress to a regular migraine headache.

These things last about 20-30 minutes or so. If you take motrin or asprin, they last 20-30 minutes. If you take nothing...20-30 minutes. You can try breathing in a bag to increase the C02 which supposedly dilates the vessels, but...lasts 20-30 minutes.

Of course, it could be something worse. Could be a transient ischemic attack or TIA, which is a stroke which is transient. The blood sugar thing is possible as hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia can present with any neurological symptom.

She should see her internist or general practice doc about this. Yes it could be a tumor, or an infection or TB or syphilis or... but usually not and there'd probably be other symptoms and signs and changes in blood chemistries.

If it has the flicker thing, it's an ocular migraine and no further work up is needed.