Summary

A stroke can affect individuals in many different ways and leave a variety of persisting side effects.  Visual field loss is a commonly reported side effect of stroke and can seriously impact on functional ability and quality of life.  Individuals who experience visual field loss following stroke can be more prone to falls and their participation in rehabilitation may be hampered.  Despite this, service provision for stroke patients with suspected visual field loss is inconsistent, with a large number of stroke services providing no formal visual assessment.  Furthermore there are no clear guidelines on how stroke patients with visual field loss should be visually rehabilitated.

VISION has been undertaken to explore the visual rehabilitation of patients who lose either the left or right half of the visual field in both eyes (homonymous hemianopia) following stroke.  Below are examples of what a person with left or right homonymous hemianopia might see.

Normal Vision

 

Left Homonymous Hemianopia

 

Right Homonymous Hemianopia

  

VISION will compare the clinical effectiveness of three different treatment methods to which patients are randomly assigned:

1.       Prism glasses

2.       Visual Search Training

3.       Information Only (Control Group)

By using visual field assessments at 6, 12 and 26 weeks after treatment start, in combination with patient completed quality of life questionnaire, the trial hopes to demonstrate whether rehabilitation methods are better at improving functional outcome in the study population compared to information only. Additionally it is hoped that it will also be possible to say whether prism glasses or visual search training are most effective at improving functional outcome.