Eye Palsy or Ophthalmoplegia

What is Eye Palsy?

Ophthalmoplegia, also known as eye palsy is the weakness or paralysis of the eye muscles. It affects the movement of an eye and the six muscles that hold the eye in the place.

Patient affected by Eye Palsy
Photo Credit: Health Jade

There are 2 types of Ophthalmoplegia:

Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia
Internuclear ophthalmoplegia

Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia

Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia typically begins with drooping eyelids and difficulty controlling the muscles that help in eye coordination. It typically appears in adults between the ages of 18 to 40 years.

Internuclear Ophthalmoplegia

Photo Credit: Internal Medicine Made Easy

Internuclear ophthalmoplegia leads to double or blurred vision. It is caused by nerve damage to the nerve fibers that coordinate lateral eye movement.

What causes eye paralysis?

Ophthalmoplegia can be congenital (by birth) or it may develop later in life. This condition causes disruption of the messages that are perceived by the eyes from the brain.

People usually suffering from this disease are over the age of 45 and have had a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Internuclear ophthalmoplegia is caused by multiple sclerosis, infarction or trauma.

External ophthalmoplegia is usually caused by muscle disorders or mitochondrial diseases such as Graves’ disease or Kearns-Sayre syndrome.

Several factors by which it is caused includes:

Brain tumor
Brain injury
Stroke
Brainstem encephalitis

It’s important to discover, address, and treat the cause of your ophthalmoplegia for the best outcome.

How do you treat eye paralysis?

Photo Credit: All about vision

People with acute stroke, show full recovery on hospitalization. However, If double vision (diplopia) is one of your symptoms, your doctor may recommend a botulinum toxin injection, or a Fresnel prism. A Fresnel prism is a thin plastic film that attaches to the back surface of your eyeglasses to correct double vision. Children born with this condition usually learn to compensate and may not be aware of vision problems.

Comments

Eye Movement Dysfunction

The rotational movements of intorsion and extorsion are necessary to keep a viewed object stable and positioned on the appropriate part of the retina as the head is tilted from side to side. To illustrate imagine standing upright and looking at an arrow that is pointing superiorly. Now tilt your head 45 degrees to the right, does the arrow move with your head? Now point at a 45 degree angle, hopefully not. Because of intorsion and extortion the arrow should still appear to be pointing superiorly. In this case the right eye has been intowarded and the left eye has been equivalently extorted so that the image falls on the same part of the retina as before the head tilt. Obviously our eye has a limited range of intorsion and extorsion. They cannot spin completely around within the orbit. And if we were to stand on our head the arrow would appear to change direction and appear to point inferiorly. Now, lets look at the movements produced by each of the extra oculum muscles. Medial and...

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