Southwest, FL | Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion | Cataract & Refractive Institute of Florida

Dr. Croley:
Hello and welcome to case of the day. I'm Dr. Crowley. And today we're going to discuss a case about where a person came in. An elderly person came in with a sudden loss of vision and we ended up examining their eye and they had what's called a branch retinal vein occlusion. So today we're going to discuss branch retinal vein occlusion. So if someone has a sudden loss of vision, then this is something that can be a cause of that.

Dr. Croley:
And basically what happens is that the blood that are already pumps blood into your retina and then there's veins that then drain the blood back out of the retina through the optic nerve. And so what happens in some cases is that the arteries, it crosses over the vein, especially in people who have hypertension, atherosclerosis, that crossing can obstruct the blood flow and then it hemorrhages back into the retina because the blood is backed up and then causes damage to the retina that area loss of vision.

Dr. Croley:
And so people who are diabetic, people who have a high cholesterol, people who have hardening of the arteries or atherosclerosis and hypertension are at risk of having this happen. And if that does happen, then you do need to make sure that your blood pressure is okay, that you don't have abnormally viscous blood. So you need to have blood work done to make sure that your blood count is okay and you need to make sure your diabetes is under control and those kinds of things. And so at sometimes we put people on aspirin or certain blood thinners when this occurs to try to help the blood flow or that channel of the vein to open back up. And typically the vision can be anywhere from not too much, if it's a small little area and the macula, the central part of your vision, that right in the middle of your vision that part of your retina is not affected.

Dr. Croley:
Then the vision loss may not be that it's significant to severe loss and someone who then hemorrhages and swells into their macular, the center part of their vision, then they can have significant loss of vision. Initially, typically, we just follow these cases to see if the channel, the vein will open back up on its own and that the backed up blood and fluid will then drain away. But many times that does not happen. So in some cases then laser treatments applied to the area where the bleeding has happened and to see if we can decrease the amount of swelling in the macular term brew the vision.

Dr. Croley:
If that's not working well, then sometimes what happens is that there's been such a loss of blood flow in the eye that the eye is stimulated to grow in new blood vessels, which then can grow up into the angle where the fluid rains out of your eye and cause a severe form of neovascular glaucoma. And so laser treatment that can be done to prevent that from happening. And also the anti-VEGF drugs that are used commonly for macular degeneration can be used in these cases at times.

Dr. Croley:
And if this edema still will not go away in the macula is still causing blurred vision, then injections of cortisone in the eye can then calm the eye down and get return of vision. And so some people, like I said, may have a small amount of vision loss to legally blind to severe loss.

Dr. Croley:
But typically after a while the retina does tend to heal and the vein does open back up or there's a new channel, there is developed that go around the blockage. And once you look into an eye, a lot of times maybe a year or two later, it's even hard to tell it anything happened to the eye.

Dr. Croley:
So this is not a rare thing. It does happen fairly commonly, and if it does, and you say, "I have sudden loss of vision," You need to get to an eye doctor right away and to make sure that something else isn't going on and to be followed closely to make sure you don't develop other problems such as neovascular glaucoma from this disease process.

Dr. Croley:
So if you have any questions about branch retinal vein occlusions, you can always try to contact us through the website. If not, may God bless you with healthy eyes and great vision.