My 9 year-old boy told me that during school time he noticed that he can see white spots in his left eye. This happened for the first time and he was worried about it. As parents, we do get worried when one of our kids mentions an illness and especially if we don’t know what might be its cause and its prognostic. We went to his ophthalmologist who examined his eyes and said that everything looks normal and healthy. He mentioned that this happens to many kids and few of them notice the spots. Usually kids who perceive details are the one who notice these spots. He related these symptoms to ocular migraine or aura migraine.
What is ocular migraine?
Ocular migraine is a painless, temporary vision disturbance that can affect one or both eyes and lasts for 20 to 30 min. The visual disturbance consists of seeing sparkling white spots or visual hallucination or blindness or blurred vision.
What causes ocular migraine?
Family history of aura migraine.
Medicines that precipitate migraine as phenylethylamine.
Food that triggers migraine as chocolate, banana and some types of cheese.
Stress, worry, illness and fatigue.
Fluorescent light, bright light, computer screens and high altitude.
Extreme sports.
How do we treat ocular migraine?
Mainly the treatment of mild ocular migraine consists of rest, stress reduction and avoiding triggers.
Usually parents should know that ocular migraine is not a life threatening disease. They have to avoid loading their child with many activities and eliminate any triggers that could cause migraine.
In case of an attack, advice your child to lie down in a dark quiet room and sleep. If headache is accompanying the ocular migraine you can administer an analgesic as ibuprofen.