How to Prove Vision Problems Resulting From Head Trauma

A traumatic head injury from a crash, or a blow, can cause limited vision or leave a person's eyesight confused. With weak vision, the person can not perform daily tasks as well. Reading can suffer. An optometrist trained in vision problems caused by head trauma finds the specific vision problem. He looks at a set of symptoms, and the brain injury that produces the vision symptoms.

Things You'll Need

• Patient chart
• Examination scope
• Lenses
• Eye chart
• Refraction testing equipment

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Instructions

• 1

  Optometrist takes a patient history. The doctor looks for a sudden and severe change in the patient's vision following the injury incident. He notes what the patient's vision was like before the injury. The history reveals any vision effects experienced during the injury. He then reviews the vision problems experienced since injury, describing the specific type of vision problem, such as focus, tracking or depth perception. He indicates the severity for each problem.

• 2

  Gives the patient a full eye and vision exam. The optometrist looks over the patients eyes. The patient moves her eyes to follow an object or to concentrate on focus points. Weakness in alignment is important, as well as differences in alignment between the two eyes. He looks for strong muscle control and steady nerves. Pupil dilations can indicate a head injury.

  The optometrist gives the patient a visual acuity test using an eye chart, looking for 20/20 vision in both eyes. A refraction test shows whether each eye properly refracts light coming into the eye. When an eye is weak, as in diplopia, acuity and refraction each suffer.

• 3

  Examines the head and brain to find injured locations and nerve pathways. In a head examination, the doctor looks for swollen parts of the head to find closed head trauma that resulted from the brain moving inside the skull. He looks for pain and swelling around the occipital lobe, cerebellum, and parietal lobe, as well as around the nerve pathways running through the optic nerves and eye sockets.

  The location of injury tells the doctor what type of vision problem is involved. The occipital lobe is the vision center. The cerebellum and parietal lobe control visual perception and differentiation of size and shape. The nerves send the brain's messages to the eyes.

• 4

  Evaluates the symptoms. The full symptom set tells the doctor the specific problem type. By reviewing the patient's symptoms and asking questions about pain and sight difficulties, the doctor finds each symptom, and charts the set. The doctor can find double vision in an eye turn and the inability of the brain to align the eyes. The patient's lack of balance and coordination indicates eye strain. If, even with guided attention, the patient can not gain their balance, poor brain functioning might prevent a quick vision restoration.

• 5

  Assesses the visual information processing by the brain. Other than the eye orbit swelling and nerve functioning interruptions that directly hamper eye functioning, head trauma will produce a visual information processing problem. Failures during task performance exercises, with objects, numbers and letters, reveal the information processing deficit. A processing problem is a diagnosis for a vision problem resulting from head trauma.