Treating Traumatic Brain Injury With Micro-Prism Lenses

While recreational sports do provide many positive benefits, they also come with a big downside: the frequent occurrence of concussions and traumatic brain injuries. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) can often result from a sports injury, but it can also be caused by a sharp blow to the head from a car accident, explosion or other trauma. No matter how the TBI came about, the results are often the same: dizziness and nausea, headaches, anxiety and balance issues, to name a few.

Seeking the Cause of Troubling Symptoms

The problem for TBI patients is that they often don’t realize what exactly is causing their symptoms. They seek the help and advice of numerous doctors and specialists, try a myriad of different medications and treatments, and endure multiple tests, all to no avail. This is usually because they’re not seeking help from the right source: a NeuroVisual Specialist like the doctors here at Vision Specialists of Michigan. A NeuroVisual Specialist would be able to tell them that their headaches, dizziness, anxiety and visual symptoms are likely being caused by a condition known as Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD). This condition is not widely known, and therefore is often not recognized for what it is.

Understanding Binocular Vision Dysfunction

Binocular Vision Dysfunction develops as a result of eyes that are no longer aligned correctly. When the eyes are out of alignment, they aren’t able to work together as they should. It’s been found that TBI can often trigger BVD, after which the brain responds by trying to fix the misalignment. It does this by forcing the eye muscles to move the eyes back to where they need to be. This puts a great deal of stress and strain on those muscles, which is what causes the aforementioned symptoms, as well as nausea, motion sickness and lightheadedness. BVD patients also have the tendency to tilt their head to one side, which is another method the body uses in an attempt to realign the eyes. While this is an effective method because it does move the images up in one eye and down in the other to correct the misalignment, over time this positioning can cause chronic neck pain.

Treatment of BVD

While many of the symptoms of BVD are unpleasant and some can even be debilitating, there is a way to find relief: treatment with micro-prism lenses. At Vision Specialists of Michigan, our doctors first perform a thorough NeuroVisual Examination to determine if BVD is in fact present. This exam will locate the slight visual misalignments that result in symptoms of BVD, which can then be corrected through the use of micro-prism lenses. Many patients receive relief from their symptoms within a few hours or even minutes of receiving their customized prescription. At the Vision Specialists of Michigan, we use advanced micro-prism lenses to help those who have been suffering from TBI finally receive the answers they’ve been seeking. To learn more about the correlation between TBI and headaches, give us a call at (248) 258-9000. You can also fill out our online BVD questionnaire to learn if you may have Binocular Vision Dysfunction.