Peripheral vision test

[Sezza123123]

My 14 year old daughter went to opticians and her vision was perfect 20/20 vision but her eyes are sometimes blurry the optician did the peripheral vision test and she failed this 3 times she has now been urgently referred to the eye clinic? Has anyone else child had this? She has got lots of other symptoms I am just worried about this thanks

Urgent referrals are pretty common from opticians in my experience, I’ve been referred on many many occasions and it’s always urgent, always handled quickly and always not an emergency. I do have problems with my eyes but nothing urgent.

The reason they err towards urgency is because eyes can signal problems elsewhere so they like to check anything they find quickly in case other referrals are needed.

Specifically on the peripheral vision part of your question, I have severely reduced peripheral vision in my right eye, if you saw the results sheets it is displayed as a circle and every light missed is shown as a black dot on the circle. My results look like the image attached. The cause in my case is an optic disc colaboma, which is basically a small patch on the optic disc near the optic nerve that never fully formed so it’s like a hole. For me that means that over years fluid would build and recede behind the macula causing damage. It freaked out opticians because it’s a reasonably rare set of circumstances, so every new optician would look, call in students and colleagues to look and write me a referral for a new random condition. I had MRIs, photos with contrast, electroretinagrams (sp??) and every type of eye test they could think of. Ultimately it was a watch and wait situation until eventually in my 30s I ended up with a detached retina and they went in and did keyhole surgery to fix it.

I do have reduced vision in that eye, but it has no impact on my life except that I’m not allowed contact lenses because no one wants to risk me getting an infection in the good eye and losing that vision. I use computers all the time, can drive, have never found a single activity I can’t do with my current level of eyesight, but then I don’t want to be a pilot or join the military or anything, they might have issues with it I suppose.

So upshot from me is that, I understand why you are concerned, but try really hard if you can to put worry aside, just let the appointments play out and see how it goes. If there’s something to worry about they’ll let you know fast.

Thank you that's reassuring hopefully they contact us back quickly hoping to get a cancellation for MRI so can be sooner 🤞

Try not to worry. Opticians are usually really cautious and refer regularly. What other symptoms does she have?

She has lots at the moment she has headaches, breathlessness, fatigue, she has pain in her stomach and back and low vitamin d she has to go back to have a lie down/stand up blood pressure test again as they weren't happy with the one she did this week thank you I'm trying not to worry

Hopefully you will get to the bottom of it soon. Low vitamin D can cause fatigue and all sorts of symptoms but is easily fixed. Better to refer and investigate and then it can be dealt with.

Hello! Just found your post as I just had one of these tests and was curious what others had said. I’m 48 and was diagnosed PRIVATELY with pernicious anaemia recently after 4+ years of symptoms including breathlessness, fatigue, occasional migraine, ‘gnawing’ tummy and blood test results which had iron, b12, folate and vitamin d all at very low levels (but still acceptable to NHS).

pernicious anaemia is really hard to diagnose because it’s mostly about symptoms rather than test results. Which means GPs are more likely to put the symptoms down to anxiety, age, hormones etc.

this may not be the case for your daughter and I don’t mean to worry you but I was just curious of the symptoms crossover and low vitamin d.

i somehow got the NHS to do a gastroscopy and they found mild inflammation/gastritis in my stomach lining.

all this to say, is it worth getting iron studies, b12, folate checked because maybe there are absorption issues which can have an effect on the eyes (and don’t let any GPs tell you differently).

Fingers crossed you’ve found a path through the nhs already and all is ok but just felt I couldn’t ignore this due to the coincidence.

i don’t come on here much but if there’s a facility to message me privately I’d be happy to help.