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The visual system is often adversely affected when the brain is injured by trauma (e.g. auto accidents), stroke, or brain tumors. Since eighty percent of the information we receive about our environment is from the visual system, vision problems significantly impair a patient's functioning.
Patients who suffer from brain injury such as strokes, tumors or head trauma, often sustain long-term functional deficits. These deficits include difficulty talking (aphasia), walking, poor fine motor control, and diminished cognitive abilities. Visual skills, and activities dependent on visual information can also be profoundly affected, because vision guides movement. When visual skills such as tracking, focusing and depth perception are impaired, this interferes with daily activities such as reading, driving, reaching, writing, eating, or walking down stairs. Symptoms of brain injury-related visual impairment include:
Dr. Brisco was instrumental in setting up a vision clinic at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center to treat brain injury patients whose visual skills are impaired. She is using innovative new treatments to help patients regain their ability to read, drive and perform everyday tasks after brain injury.
Since 80% of the information that we receive about our environment is through the visual system, it is paramount that impaired visual skills are identified early and re-trained. This helps the overall rehabilitation process by maximizing motor and daily activities that are dependent on visual skills. For more information, please refer to the website for the Neuro Optometric Rehabilitation Association at: http://www.nora.cc |
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© 2007 Hollywood Vision Center
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You need to see correctly to function
correctly because the eyes guide the hands and body. Many brain injury patients feel spatially disoriented because they are either missing part of their visual field, or because their depth perception is
altered. Until recently, patients suffering from vision impairments related to brain injury were told that there was no treatment available. A new field called Neuro-Optometric
Rehabilitation can help brain injury patients regain as much visual skill as neurologically possible.
Vision Therapy is the treatment for these visual
motor and visual perceptual defects. Impaired visual skills need to be re-learned through exercises the same that way large motor skills, such as walking, are re-trained through physical and occupational therapy.
Through Visual Rehabilitation, a patient can be trained to use his or her eyes correctly again. This gives hope to the thousands of brain injury patients who are desperately looking for ways to
regain their independence and quality of life.
Dr. Brisco evaluates patients to determine how
their vision was affected, then prescribes a variety of treatments to help improve their vision. One such treatment involves the use of special glasses, called prisms, to help expand a patient's
peripheral vision if they have a hemianopsia (reduced side vision). She also works with the patients' occupational and physical therapists to
help the patient relearn sufficient visual skills to drive safely again. Visual skills are important for stopping correctly at a stop light, staying in the middle of a
lane, changing lanes, and avoiding obstacles on the road.