Hi Dr. Andrew - I was wondering, I have a severe case (28 years / male) and am almost blind in one eye, went in to get iv treatment and am currently waiting recovery, slight improvement so far (1 day post 3 day IV treatment). Does this process of healing take a while / days / weeks? I am also going in for an MRI scan next week. What are the chances that this is something like MS? Can this simply be a spontaneous cause of optic neuritis with nothing else? I know you can't get someone's hopes up but was wondering if you knew more about the rates / statistics / probabilities :)
@@itz_dima MRI found multiple lesions sadly with definitive diagnosis of MS now sadly. My eye has never fully recovered and I am blind in my left eye now. Lucky me my first relapse had to be in the worst 5% of optic neuritis instances. Most cases recover some / partial / all vision back. Now hoping I don't get another bout of optic neuritis in my right eye. Not sure how I would live going blind now. I partially also blame the Drs that treated me as I now know they could have put me on IV steroids for 5 days (in severe cases, which was applicable to my circumstances) + provided a steroid taper in pills...
@@__Wanderer. My name is Anil. I also suffered with optic neuritis on December 2022. They have given 5 iv injections. It takes to me from 0 to 8 percentage of improvement. Now it's six months. There is no improvement in my right eye. No MS found in MRI. I asked my doctor about my vision will get back or not. He answered that it takes 1-2 years and if not there is research is going on for this and it is in success track. After one year we may get medicine for this to improve vision. But I am not believing this. Could you please ask about the research please to your doctor please that it is true or not?
@@user-qq9ls5tn8d Hi Anil, from my understanding the greatest amount of sight that you regain is the first 2-3 months (for most within the first month actually). If you google the following " A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Corticosteroids in the Treatment of Acute Optic Neuritis " you can see a study with recovery charts of severe ON. I sadly only received 3 IV doses*, I wish I had 5 as it may have helped. Personally, over a year later now I am virtually blind in my left eye with no recovery, I went to pitch black in that eye to now barely being able to see my hands with that eye. After 6 months, from literature, there seems to be a slim chance that things fully recover. The research he might be talking about is "clemastine" trials if you google - but even this shows limited improvement and is still years away from being introduced. This is an antihistamine that seems to regenerate nerves partially but may only help a couple percent, I even ordered some off brand but haven't tried them yet as it's a 60-90 day period in the trials with high dose that makes you incredibly sleepy, might try later this year though, willing to try. Good they didn't find MS, I had an MRI and they found several lesions sadly. So sorry you are going through this :( It is still a shock to me also. What you should be aware of is that there is a higher lifetime risk for MS with ON. If you google "optic neuritis and ms incidence" you can see a 50% chance of developing MS in 15 years. Still a good chance you will be perfectly healthy though, but good to listen to your body and eat healthy in the meantime. Vitamin D supplementation with a medium-high amount (stay reasonable) would also help prevent possible MS development.