Visual Rehabilitation (Post Brain Injury)

Nearly 50% of the brain is taken up with the function of vision with many parts of the brain tasked with vision processing. Each part has to be connected to other parts of the brain. All these connections make vision more prone to damage. If there is damage to the brain in a certain area, or several areas, there is a high chance that vision will be affected.

Brain injuries range from simple concussions through to the more complex conditions brought about by stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, dementia etc.

We now understand that simple concussions are not that “simple” when it comes to understanding the damage that has occurred to the brain. With active participation in high contact sports, our children and young adults are particularly at risk.

The various neurological conditions of MS, dementia etc all have unique elements of damage to the brain and require unique rehabilitation strategies. They require a non-standard assessment.

Our Quality of Life Questionnaire can help us to narrow down the areas of the brain that have been affected. 

Please consider downloading and completing before attending your appointment.

Brain Injury Visual Problem Symptoms

After a brain injury, a patient may experience blurred vision, increased light and glare sensitivity, reading difficulty as the words appear to move, poor balance, bumping into people or objects, comprehension difficulty, attention and concentration difficulty, memory difficulty, double vision, aching of the eyes, headaches, and reduction in the field of vision (loosing segments of vision). Some patients report that they are “just not right” but find it hard to put their finger on what is wrong. Often a routine eye test has not been able to identify a problem.

Visual Rehabilitation post Brain Injury

Careful assessment of the damaged functions is quite different to a standard eye test.

The first step is to identify the symptoms. Our Quality of Life Questionnaire guides patients through the process of identifying their concerns.

The second step is to support the visual system with the use of lenses, prism and tints. This allows the visual system to begin to repair itself.

The third step is to re train the visual system. By re-training the brain to relearn how to perform the tasks that have become difficult.

All three steps require a careful assessment of the patient from the perspective of brain function, rather than the traditional testing of the patient’s ability to read letters on a chart. This is a specialised area of our practice at Neilson Eyecare.

As each patient’s symptoms and causes are different, each case will be treated differently. Please make an appointment with one of our optometrists to discuss your situation. Please consider completing this questionnaire before attending your appointment. Quality of Life Questionnaire

Clinical Update – Traumatic Brain Injury and Visual Disorders: What Every Ophthalmologist Should Know. Richman EA. EyeNet Magazine, March 2014. American Academy of Ophthalmology.