Temporary Blindness

[Philip B]

Anyone ever hear about anything like this...

I ran across a story in a nationally published magazine this week; the author was talking about his trials and tribulations after his 2007 AVR surgery. He commented about his blood pressure medicine having the side effect of causing temporary blindness. According to the story, these episodes of temporary blindness hit him without warning and last about three minutes.

Does this blood pressure medicine side effect sound legitimate? My brain cannot process why anyone would do a bp med with this kind of side effect.

-Philip

 

[Duff Man]

Sounds more like a TIA to me... I've had real low blood pressure but it never made me temporarily blind for more than a few seconds after standing up or something like that, and I've never read or heard about this either. The lowest I've ever seen mine is 84/48 and i never had a total loss of vision.

Everyone's different though. Beta blockers can cause orthostatic hypotension in some sensitive people.

 

[MikeHeim]

I one episode of blindness in one eye (for about 10 minutes) somewhere around 2-4 months after my surgery, and I don't think it's that uncommon. I chalked it up to an optical migrane, and never heard anything about episodes such as these being caused by BP meds.

 

[hall]

I can not imagine the doc prescribing a bp med that could make you blind. The first thing I thought of was the driving issue. Nope, never heard of it.

Deb

 

[Nancy]

Sounds more like a TIA. Joe had several TIAs that resulted in temporary blindness in one or the other eye, never both though. They lasted for a few minutes and then cleared up.

That being said, he did have another episode of one eye blindness that didn't clear up, and he thought it was the same old same old, so never told me nor his doctors. It wasn't a TIA it was a retinal artery occlusion and he lost vision in his left eye permanently.

It possibly could have been helped if he had gone to the ER within 3 hours of it happening, but sadly, he never told anyone, so nothing could be done, although several eye doctors tried various treatments after the fact.

So, if you have any kind of blindness temporary or not, one eye or both, get to the ER and have it evaluated. And go right away. Do not fool around with it.

 

[aussigal]

I was having weird episodes with my vision and eventually we put it down to low BP...apparently when your BP drops it isnt able to adequately pump blood throughout our bodies and therefore our extremities are the first to notice this and suffer side-effects...the brain is one of these which uses/needs alot of blood and the change in vision can be the first side-effect you notice...

....makes sense to me....so in a round-a-bout way the BP med could "cause" this blindness I suppose.

 

[yankeeman]

Re: blindness and AVR

Re: blindness and AVR

I recently had a problem with vision but it was not because of any BP meds. It was because of the warfarin. I had the vitreous (the gel) inside one of my eyes separate from the retina on the back (apparently this is not all that unusual) and the inside of the eye filled with blood. Ophthalmologists (three from Tufts in Boston) said it was because of the warfarin. Blood is very slowly going away but is still there impairing my vision more than a month later. I can see, but it isn't easy. (Apparently I was spared a detached retina which CAN cause blindness...permanently.)

I had an artificial valve installed July 3, 2007 at Brigham & Women's in Boston. INR now fine..taking 7.5 mg a day of warfarin.