What type of visual disturbance qualifies as a visual aura?
Visual aura is commonly described as a scintillating scotoma. In practice, there is a much wider spectrum of visual symptoms in the migraine population. I’m curious whether people would consider “blurry vision”, “seeing spots”, or other vague descriptions as evidence of aura.
2 Answers
Mednet MemberInvited Expert
Neurology · Barrow Neurological Institute
Answered on
Visual aura should be a time-limited neurologic event (5 minutes to 60 minutes) with or without migraine headache. It can contain positive (e.g., flashes of light) and/or negative (e.g., scotoma) visual phenomena. It is often toward one side of the visual field but is binocular (comes from both eyes...
Join for free or sign in to see the full answer
Mednet MemberInvited Expert
Neurology · Greater Boston Headache Center at Boston Advanced Medicine
Answered on
As a neurologist, my definition of migraine aura is that it concerns transient focal neurological symptoms. This means that the symptoms are neurological, localizable, and transient. If they are not transient and we still think of them as migraine aura, we call them migraine aura status.
Although it ...
Join for free or sign in to see the full answer