Nutritional ambliopia: General alterations, and aspects for the correct diagnosis

Abstract

We say that ambliopia is the unilateral or bilateral decrease of visual acuteness which has no refractive origin and so no pathological or structural causes can be detected by a physical examination of the ocular glove. It is frequently related with children, in adults t is observed as a consequence of a wrong development in a very early age. The Toxic-nutritional ambliopia, or tobacco-alcohol ambliopia is found in middle aged and elderly men having trouble with the consumption of tobacco and/or alcohol joined with B complex nutritional deficiencies. The levels of tobacco and alcohol necessary to produce ambliopia are so far unknown, and the grade in which the visual acuteness decreases are considerable depending on the elevated abuse of alcohol and tobacco. Currently, The suggested treatment for the alcoholic-nutritional ambliopia is the use of complex vitamins to patients and the total suspension of alcohol and tobacco abuse; the differential diagnosis proposed by some authors includes: bilateral vision loss, escotoma centro cecal, and color vision disturbances. Because the tobacco and alcohol consumption is frequent in our environment, and the incidence of these factors over visual health is almost unknown, this report has the purpose of presenting the main characteristics of this disorder and to promote in optometrists, students, and the people concerned , restlessness about an adequate management of this patients for a correct diagnosis and treatment.