Amiodarone can affect your eyes, resulting in corneal deposits and even severe damage to the optic nerve – leading to vision loss – an unexpected side effect of the heart medication.

What is Amiodarone?

Amiodarone, also sold under brand name Pacerone, is a medication used to treat heart beat irregularities (aka arrhythmia) such as ventricular fibrillation.

When someone has an arrhythmia, it results in disrupted blood flow. Some arrythmias are minimal and manageable while others can have life threatening consequences. In order to treat arrhythmias, amiodarone drugs regulate the cells within the heart that control heart muscle contractions. This helps eliminate irregular heartbeats and resolve related complications.

Unfortunately, amiodarone is associated with serious side effects.

Amiodarone Side Effects

Some common amiodarone side effects may include nausea, fatigue, tremor, lack of coordination, headaches, and more. The drug is also associated with thyroid problems, lung toxicity, and liver toxicity. Some patients have allegedly died due to toxicity complications, so caution is required when prescribing the drug.

Because of the serious risk for side effects and complications, amiodarone is typically only prescribed to patients with a life threatening arrhythmia. In these patients, the risk for side effects is not as concerning as the real risk for death if their arrhythmias are left untreated.

These side effects have also earned the drug a black box warning enforced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The black box warning is the agency’s most extreme warning and prominently states the possibility for side effects while on the drug.

Another danger is amiodarone reacting with other medications. The drug can stay in the bloodstream for weeks or months after it is stopped. While taking the medication, and for some time after stopping the drug, patients may need to avoid certain antibiotics, blood thinners, cough medicine, heart medications, high blood pressure medications, and more.

How Does Amiodarone Affect Your Eyes?

In addition to causing potentially life threatening toxicity, amiodarone may affect a patient’s eyes.

Eye problems with amiodarone can include corneal deposits and optic neuropathy; corneal deposits being a far more common issue.

Corneal deposits are usually not accompanied by symptoms. The condition can be detected by the curved golden brown or white lines which originate below the center of the cornea. These lines cannot be seen with the naked eye but can be visualized with a slit lamp.

Optic neuropathy includes any damage to the optic nerve. The main system is loss of vision. Amiodarone induced optic neuropathy may include symptoms such as decreased visual acuity, decreased color vision, and visual field loss.

As early as 2003, scientists recognized the potential for amiodarone to affect the eyes. An amiodarone case study was released by scientists in that year, detailing three cases of amiodarone-induced optic neuropathy. Two of the patients had both eyes affected while the third patient was asymptomatic.

“If this diagnosis is suspected, attempts should be made to discontinue amiodarone,” the case study recommends. “A slow improvement in visual function, in association with the equally slow resolution of optic disc swelling, may then be expected.”

All three patients in the case study were reportedly able to discontinue amiodarone and symptoms eventually resolved.