Optic Nerve Damage: Accompanying Eye Diseases & Eye Conditions

There can be many causes to optic nerve damage and in turn, the nerve damage can be of various forms as well. Broadly speaking, there are two main types.

1. Optic nerve damage caused by trauma or injury and,
2. Optic Nerve damage resulting from some disease or medical condition.

Some of the more common eye diseases that cause optic nerve damage include glaucoma, optic neuritis, optic nerve atrophy and optic nerve head drusen.

Glaucoma a leading cause of blindness in the worldwide as reported by WHO. This occurs when the fluid pressure inside the eyes slowly rises to an amount that is damaging to the optic nerve.

When a person is affected by glaucoma, apart from a deteriorating vision, they experience various other symptoms like:

• Severe Eye pain
• Red eyes
• Headaches
• Nausea and vomiting

Optic neuritis is an inflammation or swelling of the optic nerve. It can occur in isolation of itself or it could be part of some underlying disease or condition. Things like infections, immune-related diseases like multiple sclerosis and side effects of some medication are some of the more commonly documented causes of Optic neuritis.

People with optic neuritis experience varying symptoms. Some people may experience a sudden loss of vision and then the vision coming back after some time, while some might feel their vision getting blurry and slowly fading to complete blindness, in a matter of hours.

Other symptoms include:

• Vision loss in one eye, varying in severity and may last for 7 to 10 days.
• Periocular pain (pain around eyes) mostly worsened by eye movements.
• Dyschromatopsia or the inability to see colors correctly.
• Photopsia, seeing flashing lights in one or both eyes.
• Changes in the way the pupil reacts to bright light.
• Uhthoff’s phenomenon i.e, eye vision getting worse as your body temperature increases.

In any case, each time the vision returns, a percentage of vision is lost forever.

Optic nerve atrophy is a degeneration or gradual damage to the optic nerve. There could be multiple causes like the eye not getting proper blood flow, some underlying disease like brain trauma, inflammation, degenerative disorders, hemorrhage, tumors, or exposure to a toxic substance.