Final answer:
The symptoms described point to a medical condition, potentially a pituitary gland growth or age-related macular degeneration (AMD), both affecting vision and potentially leading to blindness if not timely diagnosed and managed.
Step-by-step explanation:
The initial description of 'no early symptoms, painless, peripheral vision loss first' suggests a medical condition affecting the visual system. A few potential causes for such symptoms could be a pituitary gland growth leading to bilateral hemianopia. This condition is characterized by the loss of the outermost areas of field of vision while conserving superior and inferior peripheral vision. Patients cannot see objects to their right and left due to the compression of the optic chiasm by the pituitary tumor, but the axons projecting to the same side of the brain are left unharmed.
Another condition connected to these symptoms is age-related macular degeneration (AMD), typically marked by loss of central vision, causing difficulty in reading and recognizing faces, potentially leading to total blindness. The disease progresses with the degeneration of retinal pigment epithelium cells, crucial for nourishing the macula responsible for high visual acuity.
These conditions underline the essential nature of timely diagnosis and management in preventing irreversible vision loss and improving patient outcomes.