A new study from the USA has found that a number of post-concussion symptoms can be reduced by wearing special glasses.
After a minor head injury many people experience the ongoing symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. Some of the most common and debilitating effects of this condition are headaches, dizziness, anxiety and neck pain, which can have a significant effect on the quality of one's life.
People with these symptoms can be treated with different types of therapy and medication, but these treatments are not particularly effective and can take years to complete. However, the new study of 43 traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients has found that, in some cases, the post-concussion symptoms can be stopped or reduced by wearing spectacles with specialised lenses containing prisms.
The findings, published in the April 2010 issue of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, suggest that, for some people, it is not actually injury to the brain that directly causes the postconcussion symptoms, but strain of the eye muscles. The injury disturbs or damages nerves in the brain, causing the eyes to align differently, therefore stopping the eyes from working together properly and causing double vision.
In order to prevent this, the eye muscles overwork themselves to force the eyes back into proper alignment and it is this muscle strain that causes some of the symptoms.
The prismatic lenses work by taking over the job of the eye muscles, realigning the eyes so that the muscles no longer need to overwork. This treatment resulted in a 71.8% reduction of symptoms among the study's participants in an average of three and a half months.
This is a ground breaking discovery which could potentially have implications for the treatment of postconcussion symptoms. Hopefully it could lead to some patients recovering more quickly, which will reduce the time and cost of caring for this patient population in different therapeutic care programmes.
Reference
Doble J. E., Feinberg D. L., Rosner M. S., Rosner A. J. (2010). Identification of binocular vision dysfunction (vertical heterophoria) in traumatic brain injury patients and effects of individualized prismatic spectacle lenses in the treatment of postconcussive symptoms: a retrospective analysis. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2, 244 - 253. www.neuroskills.com/pr-10prisms.shtml.
Back