Optic atrophy

For a lay person:

Optic atrophy means the optic nerve, which carries signals from the eye to the brain, has been damaged and lost nerve fibres. It is the end result of other conditions such as glaucoma, inflammation, poor blood supply, injury, tumours or inherited disease, and the vision lost usually cannot be restored.

For a trained medical person:

A clinical sign rather than a single disease: pallor of the optic disc reflecting retinal ganglion cell axon loss from compressive, ischaemic, inflammatory, toxic-nutritional, traumatic, glaucomatous or hereditary (for example Leber's) causes. Assessment includes visual acuity, colour vision, visual fields, OCT and neuroimaging, with blood tests for toxic, nutritional or inflammatory causes. Management targets the underlying cause, with low-vision rehabilitation.

In Chinese medicine:

Liu and Tseng's textbook differentiates this condition into these patterns: Liver and Kidney Deficiency; Qi and Blood Deficiency; Heat Condition Damaging Yin; Qi Stagnation and Blood Stasis. Treatment follows the pattern a patient presents with, not the Western diagnosis alone.

When to get help: New or worsening vision loss needs prompt specialist assessment to find the cause, which may be treatable, such as a tumour pressing on the nerve. Chinese medicine is adjunctive at most and should not delay investigation.