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Case 1:
A patient whom we'll fictitiously call Ann, was referred into my office. Her main complaint was that after brain surgery she started walking into walls. Her vision was 20/20 in each eye. there didn't appear to be any pathology associated with her eyes.
When a peripheral vision test was administered, there was a problem. Each eye was missing the right half of its vision. So when both eyes were open, the right side of Ann's vision was gone. This is what caused her to walk in a non-straight manner.
I'm convinced that the visual defect was associated with the problem in the brain as visual fibers leading from the eye to the back of the head which processes vision were damaged. These fibers cannot be restored.
What I decided to do was prescribe Ann a pair of glasses which moved the image to the side. the lenses are called prisms. This helped balance the patient's visual world. The results were immediate. She was able to walk a straight line. Also, there was a significant improvement in her ability to read. Her quality of life improved immensely.
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Case 2:
A patient whom we'll refer to as Joan, came in the day before Thanksgiving complaining that she scratched her eye with an artificial Christmas tree. She was in significant pain entering our office. Upon examination, it was evident the front surface of the eye, the cornea, was indeed scratched.
Instead of patching the eye, we used a contact lens with no power. This functioned as a bandage. The advantage of this is that the patient has immediate relief and has use of two eyes compared to having only one eye when a conventional eye patch is used.
I followed that patient over the next several days to make sure the eye healed correctly. Antibiotic was also administered (to prevent against infection) at this time topically. The patient wore the contact lens for several days until the surface of the eye healed. This method of treating a scratched eye works well in most but not all cases.
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Case 3:
John is a long time contact lens patient who came into the office with significant pain in his left eye. As it turned out, the patient had a corneal ulcer in the central part of his eye. Corneal ulcers can be sight threatening, especially if they are in the central part of the eye. We had seen the patient on Saturday and Sunday and prescribed a strong antibiotic to be administered on an hourly basis. I also wanted to have an ophthalmological consult to make sure the eye was healing appropriately. Everything turned out well. The patient's eye healed well. He was capable of 20/20 vision with correction.
It is important to note that it was imperative for the patient be seen on both Saturday and Sunday. It was interesting that the patient's insurance did not have any access to a medical doctor on the weekends. Fortunately, I was able to take care of the problem and refer him to a specialist on Monday.
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