What is Binocular Vision? | Valley Vision Care

What is BVD?

Binocular Vision Dysfunction (BVD) is a serious eye condition where the eyes are misaligned, sending two different images to the brain. The brain struggles to merge these two different images into one clear image, causing symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, anxiety, motion sickness, and chronic neck pain.

Symptoms of BVD

BVD can severely impact people of all ages. Children with BVD often struggle with reading in school, hand-eye coordination, playing sports, and car sickness. This condition often leads to misdiagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, and migraines in children. Adults with BVD regularly experience headaches, daily anxiety and dizziness, and can be severely limited from doing normal tasks or succeeding in the workplace.

The symptoms of BVD are wide-ranging and not often recognized by traditional eye doctors. Those who specialize in treating BVD often organize the symptoms into groups based on how they impact patients:

Physical Findings

Neck pain and/or shoulder and back pain
Struggles to walk in a straight line
Head tilt
Clumsy, bumping into doorways and people they are walking next to
Prone to falling or tripping

Neurological Symptoms

Migraines; daily headaches
Migraine associated vertigo (MAV) or vestibular migraine (VM)
Seizures

Anxiety Symptoms

Panic attacks in crowded areas or on highways
Anxiety in large department stores or shopping malls
Agoraphobia (extreme fear of open or crowded places, or of leaving one's own home)

Reading Challenges

Rereading for comprehension
Skipping lines when reading
Letters running together
Uses finger-pointing when reading
Fatigue with reading
Difficulty focusing or paying attention
Struggling to pay attention in school

Driving Challenges

Anxiety on the highway
Car sickness or nausea
Experience glare at night
Trouble driving at night

Binocular Vision Challenges

Diplopia or double vision
Poor depth perception or judging distances
Trouble catching balls
Difficulties with hand-eye coordination
Poor handwriting & drawing skills
Poor eye contact
Covering one eye to clear the image

What Causes BVD?

The condition can be caused by facial asymmetry similar to adults, or it can be caused by a concussion or head injury, such as from a soccer game or falling while riding a bike. Some research suggests that at least 20% of adults experience some symptoms of BVD that may be interfering with their everyday lives. Someone you know may be suffering from binocular vision dysfunction and not even realize it. Exactly why some people develop BVD and others don’t often isn’t clear.

Early research has found that BVD can be genetically inherited and run in families, most often from mother to daughter. In other clinical research, there is a direct correlation between head injury or concussion and the onset of BVD symptoms. There is also a connection between BVD and acquired brain injuries caused by a stroke, Lyme disease, COVID-19, and Mono (Mononucleosis).

Can BVD Be Misdiagnosed?

Yes, BVD symptoms are often mistaken for a number of other conditions since many medical and eye doctors don’t know how to screen for and diagnose BVD. Patients are regularly but mistakenly told they have one of the following conditions, while in reality BVD is the main cause of their symptoms: