Neuro-Ophthalmology

What is Neuro-Ophthalmology?

Neuro-ophthalmology treats patients experiencing visual problems that don’t originate inside the eye. Oftentimes, these optic disorders are related to the brain and could include issues caused by disease or injury to the brain and the nerves that connect the eye to the brain.

Common symptoms treated by neuro-ophthalmologists include double vision, unexplained visual loss, headache, uncontrollable blinking (blepharospasm), abnormal eye movements, unequal pupil size, and protrusion of the eye.

Conditions our neuro-ophthalmologists routinely treat include:

Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy
Blepharospasm
Cranial Nerve Palsy and Ocular Motor Disorders
Giant Cell Arteritis
Facial Spasms
Optic Neuropathies
Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension
Inflammatory and Infectious Optic Neuropathies
Optic Neuritis
Tumors Involving Vision
Optic Nerve Swelling (Papilledema)
Vision Complications Related to Multiple Sclerosis

UR Medicine's Approach

Neuro-ophthalmic diseases can be difficult to diagnose and treat. To diagnose these conditions, UR Medicine’s Flaum Eye Institute uses advanced technology, including vascular studies, CT, MRI, and fluorescein angiography.

Treatment may require medical therapies or just careful monitoring of patients’ conditions.

When surgery is required, our expertise covers orbital tumors, socket reconstruction, eyelid repair, and orbital decompression, as well as correction of paralytic strabismus.

What Sets Us Apart?

We have the largest group of fellowship-trained neuro-ophthalmologists in Upstate New York. We also collaborate with many other doctors at the University of Rochester Medical Center to provide patients with a complete and holistic view of their conditions, and deliver the most effective therapy. This multidisciplinary approach to care ensures that complex disease thoroughly and appropriately diagnosed and managed.

We have a growing number of locations for your convenience. Each is equipped with the latest and most advanced diagnostic equipment and many of our offices have full service optical shops where you can purchase glasses and contact lenses.

Our main facility includes our own surgery center on the second floor of Strong Memorial Hospital, just below the Eye Institute’s faculty practice clinic. We have a second ambulatory surgery center located on Sawgrass Drive.

Equipped with the most up-to-date surgical equipment, we’re able to routinely perform complex procedures that were once referred to eye care centers hundreds of miles away, saving you time and keeping you close to home.

We’re also part of National Clinical Trials and are ranked in the top 20 in eye research funding in the United States, including an NIH-funded. So, you can be assured that our care is informed by the latest scientific discoveries.