Why You Are One-eyed Man

The other time I overheard a man speaking of a relative who was struck by a degenerative condition that substantially impaired sight in one eye. He virtually regarded the condition as a retribution for her ”inequities,” for as he puts it the victim of the eye condition is “petulant and evil.”

It is possible there are others facing such a visual predicament and might attach superstition to it. Well, vitreous haemorrhage is the medical term for the sudden relapse in the vision of one eye. The experts say, this hardly happens in both eyes, and the condition results in incapacitation which requires urgent medical help. This might prove scary at the onset building anxiety as to whether it might not lead to total blindness.

Globally, the average occurrence of incidence is 48 in every 10,000 people. Reports say it is common in males between ages 40 and 59. As soon as symptoms occur, the patient must be rushed to a medical emergency where an opthalmologist will check whether there was a retina tear or detachment.

Ageing and trauma are part of the tall list of conspirators. A motor accident victim who sustained a cut close to the eye, got away with it in as the cut was stitched and the eyeball miraculously untouched by impact. Later years proved otherwise as he suffered a setback, explained to be a vitreous haemorrhage.

There is a ray of hope for sufferers or patients because medical intelligence describes vitreous haemorrhage not as a disease but as a sign of underlying conditions. These relate to diabetes, Mellitus, prematurity, sickle cell anaemia, hypertension and others. It is held that the condition is manageable but an interplay of causes that require different medical solutions. Paediatricians, radiologists, neurologists, haematologists and oncologists team up with eye specialists in the management of the condition.

Vitreous haemorrhage is described as the seepage of blood into the vitreous cavity in the eyeball. The blood is dispersed in the gel and settles down rapidly to form a clot due to the force of gravity. The amount of blood spilling into the vitreous gel determines whether the colour will be red or yellow in the eye. The abnormality is painless but note that the initial seepage is marked by a painful sensation in the eye, to be followed by floaters in the vision. On the surface, the affected eye will look normal but its actuality is that it cannot see.

Treatment is directed at the underlying causes such as laser photo-coagulation for proliferative diabetic retinopathy or for retinal breaks. Occasionally, haemorrhage does not resolve spontaneously and vitrectomy surgery is necessary and beneficial. New strategies for the treatment of vitreous haemorrhages, such as pharmacologic vitreous liquefaction, may be important in the future. Simply put, these are non-intrusive procedures called laser surgery or intrusive ones where doctors reach the back end of the eye socket with certain devices to remove the clots. In some cases, the bloody natural gel is replaced with an artificial gel.

Sometimes, vitreous haemorrhage is self-healing but this may take years as only one per cent of the blood peters away daily.