by Hadi Setyono

Created on: April 27, 2009

By checking for visual response to object outside of your straight line of sight - normal peripheral vision should be +/- 60 degrees from straight on. (best description, not a good one, but hope it makes sense)

An example of a peripheral vision test might be placing your head into a half sphere that's covered with small lights inside while looking straight ahead. The machine my optician uses a random light display and I would press a button every time I saw a light. I'm a bit grammatically challenged today, and I apologize and hope some of this makes sense.

There are highly accurate ways to do it if you go to a vision specialist. However, if you are looking for the quick (and free!) way to do you can do it as follows:

1. If you are testing yourself find a friend without visual problems

2. Get a wand with a small red ball at the top (a pencil with red eraser works fine)

3. Face your friend/subject and cover one eye each so your open eyes are across from each other (i.e. one right eye and one left eye closed)

4. Gradually move the red dot to the periphery while each looks directly at the eye across from them

5. The red dot should disappear from each's vision at approximately the same point

6. Test the other eye in the same way if desired.

Be careful as you will each have a "blind spot" about 2/3 of the way to the end of the peripheral vision so if it goes away "early", keep going and see if it reappears.

Generally speaking glasses are for central vision problems not peripheral so glasses don't help peripheral vision. There are many causes of lost peripheral vision. Some can be helped with medicine, surgery, injections. Only an ophthalmologist (Physician Eye MD) can answer your specific questions after determining why you have lost peripheral vision.

The most common reason for that, as in my case, is migraine, with or without other symptoms such as headache or nausea.

But there are rarer and more serious possibilities, so it should definitely be reported. There is no simple test for migraine, so that is only a reliable diagnosis *after* other things have been ruled out. Transient ischemia, for example.

It can be a warning sign of a impending stroke.

People with a form of partial vision loss known as homonymous hemianopia now have a potentially better way to cope with

their disability: special eyeglasses equipped with prisms that allow the wearer to avoid obstacles. The glasses are also less expensive than some other options for people with hemianopia. Soon, eyeglasses with prisms may also help people with

tunnel vision due to glaucoma and retinitis pigmentosa.

Glaucoma damages the side vision first the central or reading vision only at the very end. A peripheral vision test also known as a visual field tests looks for this damage and is usually done with several other tests: gonioscopy, optic nerve photographs, optic nerve OCT, central corneal thickness tests.

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