How a Neuro-Optometrist Can Help With Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery

Each year in the United States, emergency rooms treat approximately 1 million people for traumatic brain injury (TBI), and about 5.3 million Americans live with residual disability due to head trauma.

While TBIs can impact many aspects of your health, one area that often bears the brunt is your vision.

This is where our skilled team at DeyeNAMICS can help. As specialists in neuro-optometry, we repair and re-strengthen your visual system so that you can move past your TBI and live independently and confidently.

How TBIs can Affect Your Visual System 

A concussion can affect many areas of your brain, including the visual cortex in your occipital lobe and other vision-associated areas in the brain. This often results in symptoms that affect perceptual awareness or overall visual stability which can produce discomfort, anxiety, or exhaustion, even when the eyes themselves are healthy.

If the TBI impacts this part of your brain, you can develop issues associated with Post-Trauma Vision Syndrome. A “syndrome” refers to a group of possible symptoms, which in this case may include:

• Visual acuity problems (difficulty with clarity of vision)
• Visual field loss/reduction
• Convergence issues — how well your eyes turn inward
• Double vision
• Strabismus — a misalignment of the eyes
• Difficulty focusing and fixating 
• Visual neglect — ignoring one side of your visual field
• Loss of central vision
• Eyestrain and light sensitivity
• Visual midline shift syndrome — a spatial processing dysfunction that affects movement and balance

Left untreated, your vision system may continue to have these issues leading to disruption to quality of life and overall functioning. That’s why rehabilitating the neural connections involved in vision and spatial processing is essential.

Repairing Your Visual System After a TBI

It’s hard to say which treatments we might use to address your Post-Trauma Vision Syndrome, as no two TBIs follow the same course. We first assess the visual system and brain-based visual processing for any spatial visual processing deficits and then meet you where you are to improve these areas.

Some examples of the many tools and treatments we use for TBIs include:

• Specialized lenses, such as prisms and tinted lenses
• Neuro-visual postural therapy
• Balance exercises
• Focusing work
• Multi-sensory integration

We utilize a wide range of specific exercises for each vision issue. Think of neuro-optometric rehabilitation like physical or occupational therapy after an injury: We use targeted exercises to re-establish and strengthen the areas affected in your visual processing center.

Moving Forward with Confidence

Our neuro-optometrists can play a critical role in helping you recover from a TBI and re-engage with the world more confidently and quickly.

For expert help with your TBI, contact us at one of our offices in Sacramento, Bellflower, or Valencia, California; Guildford, Connecticut; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; or Plano, Texas, to set up an appointment.