Restoration vs. Compensation in Neurovisual Rehabilitation of Visual Field Defects

University of Magdeburg

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Brain Injuries, Traumatic; Hemianopia

Treatments: Behavioral: Vision Restoration Training (VRT); Behavioral: Vision Exploration Training (VET)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04043429

VRT100

Details and patient eligibility

About

Visual field defects (VFD) are a frequent effect of cerebral lesions especially after posterior cerebral artery stroke. The present study was conducted to compare effects of vision restoration training (VRT) and compensation training (Visual Exploration Training, VET) on visual field performance.

Enrollment: 86 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 80 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Visual field defects after brain damage
• lesion age above 6 months
• documented brain lesions due to ischemic stroke, hemorrhage or tumor demonstrated by computer tomography or by magnet resonance imaging

Exclusion criteria

• hemispatial neglect
• complete blindness
• severe psychotic diseases
• serious drug abuse
• chronic degenerative diseases (dementia, multiple sclerosis)
• severe motor impairments
• noticeable low intelligence influencing proper comprehension of diagnostic and training instructions
• considerable impaired vision (visual acuity below 0.1 generated by amblyopia, opacity of cornea or lens, maculopathy and other retinal diseases where vision impairment is expected in the next month (e.g. subretinal neovascularisation, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy)
• inability to fixate due to central scotoma, pathological nystagmus or other forms of fixation disabilities

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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86 participants in 2 patient groups

Vision Restoration Training (VRT)

Experimental group

Description:

home-based rehabilitation program which applies intense light stimulation via a PC-monitor to areas of residual vision with a duration of 1 hour daily/six days a week, subjects are asked to respond via button press upon appearance of light stimuli without eye movements

Treatment:

Behavioral: Vision Restoration Training (VRT)

Vision Exploration Training (VET)

Active Comparator group

Description:

home-based rehabilitation program to train eye movements upon visual stimuli presented via a PC-monitor with a duration of 1 hour daily/six days a week, subjects are asked to shift their gaze towards targets and respond via button press upon detection of targets

Treatment:

Behavioral: Vision Exploration Training (VET)