Santa Monica Vision Loss & Injurious Attorneys

Personal Injury Vision Loss Attorneys at McGee Lerer Ogrin

Healthy eyes are absolutely essential to many of our cognitive and motor functions, which in effect has a direct effect on many aspects of our lives. The eyes are complex sensory organs that optimize vision under varying lighting conditions, and the human eye is not all that different from the photography camera. The visual process allows us to have the appropriate cognitive and motor response to outside influences. Sight is more than visual acuity, or sharpness, it's also a complicated, learned, and developed set of functions that have evolved into an intricate interplay of visual and cognitive skills over our lifetime. Research shows that up to 85% of man's cognitive abilities, including perception and learning are reliant upon the visual process.

One of the most common residual impairments associated with head injuries (from accidents) are visual-perception disorders, and a large percentage of brain injury victims will experience moderate to severe vision loss. The visual process is broken down into three main categories: 1) visual acuity and visual field, 2) visual-motor abilities, and 3) visual perception.

A person's visual acuity is their clarity of sight, whereas the visual field is their peripheral vision or panorama vision. Visual motor abilities refer to the alignment of the eyes, with proper alignment of the eyes being called phoria. Visual perception involves a broad range of perceptions including: visual motor integration (eye-foot or eye-body coordination), visual memory (recalling what we've seen through our eyes), visual closure (being able to mentally complete a visual image based on the parts that we see), spatial relationship (knowing where you are in relation to objects around you), and figure discrimination (the ability to discern an object with the background). Every moment of the day our cognitive and motor functions rely upon each aspect of our "visual process" in order to form thoughts, understand the world around us and to move around freely without bumping into unforeseen objects.

Injurious Accidents & Subsequent Vision Loss

Head injuries are known to cause all types of vision loss that can range from minor to severe, temporary to permanent. Perhaps some of the most impairing forms of vision loss include vision field loss, intractable double vision, and visual/balance disorders.

Visual field loss occurs when the victim has lost half of their field of vision. This can leave the person susceptible to falls, bumping into objects, and being struck by approaching objects.

Double Vision (diplopia) is a serious and upsetting condition that often affects patients with a brain injury. Double vision is often treated with lenses, prisms and vision therapy. If these tools fail to remedy the situation, the person can experience intractable diplopia.

Visual balance disorders are often caused by head injuries. These can include: Visual Medline Shift Syndrome, oculomotor dysfunction in fixations, and other disruptions to the patient's central and peripheral visual processing. These are often treated with lenses, prisms and other forms of visual rehabilitation therapy.