Question

Now I'm going to test eye muscles. Can you follow my finger as I pass through the six positions? (Hold at extreme left and right) Ok, and now just look at a point behind my head as I shine this light. Good, your eye muscles are healthy and I did not see any sign of lazy eye. The cranial nerves 3, 4 and 6 controlling eye moments are all intact.

Answer 1

Testing eye movement is a matter of tracking the movement of a pen through the visual field without moving the eyes. It helps determine if the eye muscles are functioning properly and can detect conditions like internuclear ophthalmoplegia. Diplopia, or double vision, can occur when the eyes are not properly coordinated.

Step-by-step explanation:

Testing eye movement is simply a matter of having the patient track the tip of a pen as it is passed through the visual field. This may appear similar to testing visual field deficits related to the optic nerve, but the difference is that the patient is asked to not move the eyes while the examiner moves a stimulus into the peripheral visual field. Here, the extent of movement is the point of the test. The examiner is watching for conjugate movements representing proper function of the related nuclei and the MLF. Failure of one eye to abduct while the other adducts in a horizontal movement is referred to as internuclear ophthalmoplegia. When this occurs, the patient will experience diplopia, or double vision, as the two eyes are temporarily pointed at different stimuli. Diplopia is not restricted to failure of the lateral rectus, because any of the extraocular muscles may fail to move one eye in perfect conjugation with the other.