Asthenopia

Asthenopia

As asthenopia ( ancient Greek ἀσθενής, asthenes " weak, sick" and ὀπτικός, optikos, " for seeing belonging " ) or asthenopia refers to a symptom complex, the - often in younger people - leads to different sensations under visual load, and by motor, accommodative, sensory or visual disturbances of vision is triggered.

Symptoms

When symptoms are mentioning, inter alia:

• Heaviness of the eyelids
• Rapid fatigue and general malaise
• Headache
• Eye redness, pain and tears, especially with near work
• Occasionally double vision
• Dizziness
• Blurred vision

Typically, the symptoms do not occur until later in the day or with the increase of visual stress, eg during intensive screen work.

Causes

It is generally distinguished by optical / accommodative, muscular, nervous and symptomatic asthenopia. The causes may be considered:

• Not false or corrected ametropia of the eye such as nearsightedness farsightedness or
• Disorders of the eye muscle coordination, eg convergence weakness, fixation disparity or latent strabismus ( heterophoria )
• Central Disorders of fusion, ie the fusion of the two individual images of the eye into a single
• Fatigue and exhaustion
• Mental influences
• Neuralgia, conjunctivitis, etc.