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Three Cut Eye Exercises

With any eye injury, patients should seek proper treatment and care from a medical professional before attempting any exercises or alternative treatment methods. However, a cut eye (or hemianopsia, referring specifically to the loss of sight in one or both sides of a person's peripheral vision) or impaired vision can also be treated with eye exercises that focus on optical muscle strengthening and reactivity to external stimuli.

  1. Multistep Saccades

    • According to EyeAssociates.com, patients suffering from hemianopsia often experience loss of vision in half of their visual field, when looking either right or left. One method of retraining the eye involves multistep saccades, or the process of first looking in the direction of the field loss before trying to search for an object. For example, patients with right-side hemianopsia who are having difficulty reading might benefit from looking at the last letter of each word rather than the first letter. Implementing this process should allow the patient to see the entire word on a page instead of just a portion due to the eye injury.

    Sensory Awareness Exercises

    • Another problem many patients with eye injuries or hemianopsia may experience is difficulty walking or loss of limb sensory due to a loss of sensory awareness, or where a person perceives to be in a particular moment. According to BrainInjuries.org, an exercise shown to be effective in the treatment of hemianopsia and other eye injuries where the vision field is hindered involves stressing sensory awareness in the area of the neglect (i.e., the field of vision lost due to injury). For example, with help from another person, patients trace a line that extends into the side of the neglect. The patient will then put a finger at the far side of the line in the area of the neglect while the assistant rubs the finger to stimulate sensory awareness on the neglected side. Focusing the eye on this side after regaining sensory awareness will also help reinforce eye focus.

    Occular Scanning

    • Once the patient has regained awareness from a sensory perspective, he or she can also attempt ocular scanning to promote further vision field recovery. According to BrainInjuries.com, patients should scan their eyes to the neglected side about 20 degrees, then slowly move the head in the same direction in a lateral manner. This exercise will help the patient to focus on an object using peripheral vision.

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