Home » Symptoms of Stroke » Visual Field Defect A stroke happens when blood is restricted from reaching the brain. Thus the important ingredients like oxygen and various food nourishments do not reach the brain and thus the body or a particular side of the body is paralyzed. Stoke is a medical emergency. When blood is stopped the brain cells begin to die. A person can experience two kinds of stroke – hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke. The mini strokes are also known as transient ischemic attacks or TIAs. Some prominent symptoms of stroke is sudden and severe headache. The reason of the headache is however not known.

The person who had stroke may also show other symptoms like visual field defect, trouble in walking, dizziness, may sense loss of balance and can also feel a certain sense of confusion. If someone is experiencing these symptoms then the person should be immediately shifted to a hospital and treatment should started.

Visual field defect is sometimes referred as field of view. However, both these things are not similar. According to J. Smythies, the visual field is defined as “spatial array of visual sensations available to observation in introspections psychological experiments.”

Visual field defect is usually related to ophthalmology and optometry. A visual field test is carried out to determine whether this abnormality is due to some disease or not.

Children who suffer from visual field defect may have specific neurological problems. The child may also suffer from eye problems. The children who suffers from this disease may experience difficulty in reading, may experience difficulty in mobility and spatial awareness. The parents may not be able to detect that their child is suffering from visual filed defect because the central vision of the child seems to be normal. But the peripheral vision of the child is not normal. A child who is suffering from this type of abnormality may face difficulty in reading. He or she may see only part of an object and needs to tilt or turn his or head to have a clear view of the whole object.

Detecting this defect in a child or an infant is quite difficult. The only pace where specific and specialized medical test are carried out to detect this type of abnormality is The Visual Function Service at Children's Hospital. Several specific tests are carried out on the child. The medical tests depend on the age of the child, on the level of visual impairment and also on developmental status. In case of adults this abnormality can be tested by using a technique known as hemispheric perimeter. The patient sits before a concave dome. The patient is asked to stare at a target which is located at the center of the dome. Then small lights are lit at several peripheral locations and the patient is asked to locate these lights. The responses are then plotted on a visual field map. It helps to detect whether the patient is suffering from visual filed defect or not.

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