A lady of my acquaintance (nopw in her 70’s) has suddenly been afflicted by double vision in both eyes. She has been in the local hospital for a week during which time various scans including 2 x MRI have been carried out. Ruled out has been stroke, tumour, diabetes and MS. I am wondering if in your years of experience you may have come across this type of complaint and can offer me something that the local people can’t. I should add that she has an appointment at Royal Melbourne on Monday for more tests. I would be most appreciative if you have anything to offer on this.

bucolic3401 said:

A lady of my acquaintance (nopw in her 70’s) has suddenly been afflicted by double vision in both eyes. She has been in the local hospital for a week during which time various scans including 2 x MRI have been carried out. Ruled out has been stroke, tumour, diabetes and MS. I am wondering if in your years of experience you may have come across this type of complaint and can offer me something that the local people can’t. I should add that she has an appointment at Royal Melbourne on Monday for more tests. I would be most appreciative if you have anything to offer on this.

Double vision = shut one eye and it’s single vision?

People tend to be confused about what double vision is. Double vision in one eye only is extremely rare, it means something is wrong with that particular eye. Most double vision is because the muscles which move your eyes around (there are 6 around each eye, so plenty of potential for one to get out of whack) are in some way affected.

Anyway, the only thing that springs to mind that isn’t on that list you gave as having been ruled out would be thyroid dysfunction. Which can be quite reversible. Depending on what scans were done, they may have looked at this. The ones you fear most are stroke and tumour.

In the meantime, she may be more comfortable using a patch so her world is not double. It’s quite distressing and has a name – horror fusionalis. She will also be clumsy as her depth judgement will be poor. I’ve found it actually helps people to know this. It’s less worrisome if you know it is “normal” in this situation. Tell her that when she is pouring tea to put one hand on the cup…this gives her brain two bits of information (eye and touch) in order to work out where the cup is. She will be more likely to actually get the stuff in the cup that way. (My job was to work out how to get people to be relatively comfortable while the specialists worked out exactly what was going on, so I’ve got practical tips to give!)

I don’t understand that, or is it flippant?

Our posts have crossed. Yes the thyroid was mentioned so am hoping RM may sort it out.

bucolic3401 said:

Our posts have crossed. Yes the thyroid was mentioned so am hoping RM may sort it out.

How long has the double vision been going on?

Just over two weeks, she kept quiet about it for a week. Is there a reason or cause for something like this? Age, lifestyle, eyestrain or any other factor.

bucolic3401 said:

Just over two weeks, she kept quiet about it for a week. Is there a reason or cause for something like this? Age, lifestyle, eyestrain or any other factor.

The Royal Melbourne will be able to help. There will be a cause. It’s a matter of finding it. And then remediating it.

Thanks very much. Much appreciated.

So we’re talking strabismus here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabismus

Very common, but I know next to nothing about it.

My father-in-law had strabismus as a result of a paralysis tick on his face that paralysed one of the muscles controlling eye movement. He dealt with that using a pair of glasses, one of which was frosted over so he had deliberately blurred the vision in that eye.

Anything that causes muscle damage can cause strabismus, and there are a lot of ways that muscles can be damaged. For instance, temporary bleeding into a muscle can stop it contracting properly when the blood clots.

One cause of double vision that he won’t have are albinism. Albinos are often immediately recognisable by their eyes pointing in different directions, no matter how they colour their hair.

I have had double vision in one eye, as recently as this morning as it happens, through a combination of myopia and floaters. Myopia blurs light into a circle and a floater across the centre can make the centre invisible leaving vision from the arcs on both sides. Not a problem, move eyes and it vanishes.