Man reportedly experiences ‘eye stroke’ going blind after playing games on his phone
Your bedtime smartphone ritual may be worse for your health than previously thought.
The South China Morning Post reports one young man went temporarily blind after playing games on his phone in the dark.
Doctors in China says they’ve diagnosed the man with what they are calling an eye stroke — known as a “central retinal artery occlusion” in the medical world or a blockage of the arteries that bring oxygen to the retina.
Symptoms include vision loss which, if left untreated can be permanent.
But eye doctors in the U.S. say they’re skeptical.
Retinal surgeon at Mount Sinai’s New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Dr. Gareth Lema told the post that eye strokes usually occur in older people who are also suffering from carotid artery plaque or cardiac valve disease.
She said it’s more likely “transient smartphone blindness,” a condition thoroughly outlined in a New England Journal of Medicine case study in 2016, where multiple people had experienced this type of vision loss on multiple occasions off and on for months while using their phones in the dark, sometimes claiming blindness for as long as 15 minutes at a time.
Where multiple people had experienced this type of vision loss on ultiple occasions off and on for months while using their phones in the dark- sometimes claiming blindness for as long as 15 minutes at me.