What Is Diplopia Management?
Diplopia, or double vision, happens when your two eyes aren’t pointing at exactly the same spot: your brain receives two different images and perceives them as overlapping or separated. It’s a symptom that disrupts everyday life (reading, driving, working), and it can also be a sign of an underlying neurological problem.
Diplopia management starts with the most important step: finding the cause. Everything else in treatment depends on it. Once it’s identified, we choose the strategy that restores single, functional vision.
Why Double Vision Needs Evaluation
New-onset diplopia can stem from:
- Nerve palsies that move the eye (sometimes from serious causes like aneurysms)
- Muscle disorders or problems at the nerve-muscle junction (myasthenia gravis)
- Thyroid eye disease (thyroid-related orbitopathy)
- Trauma or neurological aftereffects
That’s why new double vision, especially if it comes on suddenly or with a headache, deserves prompt evaluation.
Treatment Options
Depending on the cause and how stable the condition is:
- Prisms: special lenses that realign the images so they merge into one. They can be built into your glasses.
- Occlusion: temporarily covering one eye eliminates the double image while the underlying cause is being resolved.
- Treatment of the underlying condition: thyroid disease, myasthenia gravis, and other causes each have their own management approach.
- Eye muscle surgery: when the misalignment is stable and significant, we refer for surgical correction (see strabismus surgery).
A Step-by-Step Process
- Diagnosing the cause during a neuro-ophthalmic evaluation.
- Initial management to relieve the diplopia (prisms, occlusion) and treat the underlying condition.
- Monitoring progress: many cases of diplopia improve once the underlying cause resolves.
- Surgery, only if the misalignment stabilizes and doesn’t improve with other measures.
Why Choose Centro Láser for Diplopia Management
At Centro Láser, diplopia management is part of our neuro-ophthalmology department, which first identifies the cause through a complete evaluation and coordination with neurology when needed. From there, we choose the right strategy for your case, from prisms to referral for surgery, backed by every subspecialty at the center.
