Case Study

Diplopia / Double Vision

This is typical example of how wide area is of acupuncture domain, including ophthalmic pathology. A young female patient came to our office with swollen, protruded, watering red left eye. She was crying with tears flowing on face due to agonising pain in her eye. Her left eye deviated to right causing squint. She was not able to move her eye ball to left. She had double vision, seeing double images as both eye balls were in differ direction.

She was investigated by MRI CT Scan and other examination by neurologists, ophthalmologists and neurosurgeon. History examination and going through her reports, showed that she was having 6th nerve palsy of left eye. She had consulted number of ophthalmologists, neurologist and others for agonies that she was going through for more than a month. The pain persisted in spite of treatment she had taken.

There is no prescribed acupuncture treatment for such condition, especially when all concerned specialist had failed. However since she was in sever agony we had decided to give try. We concluded that sixth nerve palsy seemed to be due to raised pressure inside skull causing extra-ocular pressure causing eyeball to protrude. The pressure was itself was responsible eye pain. Inflammation and oedema inside skull

also cause of sixth nerve palsy. The core problem was extra ocular pressure due to inflammation and oedema at posterior surface of eye ball.

Acupuncture has property of reducing inflammation. We treated her accordingly and in first treatment, her pain and other complaints were reduced by 50 %. Following her treatment for next fortnight all her problems were reduced by more than 75%. In next three months, her all complaints were resolved.

Such cases are not documented in literature, and boundaries of acupuncture therapy are still not fully explored.