Blindness – What it is, Causes, Symptoms and Treatments!
Congenital deprivation or partial or total, transient or permanent loss of vision , blindness can result from injury to the eye itself, to the optic pathways or to the higher nervous centers, with different causes, from eye trauma to congenital diseases.
In general terms, blindness can come from four causes: infectious diseases (trachoma, syphilis); systemic diseases (diabetes, arteriosclerosis, nephritis, diseases of the central nervous system, severe nutritional deficiencies); eye trauma (blows, action of acids); and congenital and other causes ( senile cataract , glaucoma, malignant myopia).
In any pathological process, color vision is the first visual sensation to be compromised and the last to be recovered.
Causes: The causes of blindness can be reversible and irreversible:
The main causes of reversible blindness are:
- cataract
- corneal opacity
- Trachoma (formerly known as “child pain”)
- Retinal detachment (reversible if urgently operated)
- migraine .
The main causes of irreversible blindness are:
- advanced glaucoma
- AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration)
- advanced diabetic retinopathy
- Vitamin A deficiency (especially in children)
- Optic neuritis, an inflammation of the optic nerve, which carries information from the retina to the brain
- Amblyopia (popularly known as “lazy eye”).
- Stroke, retinitis pigmentosa and tumors are other less common causes of blindness .
Symptoms: These are the main symptoms of blindness :
- Sudden headache not relieved by pain relievers (tends to affect one side)
- Scalp pain (brushing your hair can be painful)
- Swelling in the temporal arteries visible to the naked eye
- Jaw pain especially when talking and chewing
- Vision problems , including double vision , blurred vision, and loss of vision in one or both eyes
Diagnostics: The ophthalmologist will need to do a series of tests in order to arrive at an accurate diagnosis of your blindness .
The ophthalmologic exam consists of evaluating the best vision of both eyes with the best optical correction. And if the best vision of both eyes does not reach 100%, the ophthalmologist will perform an analysis of each eye structure to investigate which disease justifies the low vision of each patient.
Treatments: Even with the advancement of technology and medicine, there is still no treatment for all types of blindness . In the case of cataracts , the problem can be solved with an operation to remove the lens and implant an artificial lens.
The possible treatment of blindness is currently being studied using human embryonic stem cells.