Neglected-Field Eye Patching Improves Visual Inattention in Hemispatial Neglect: A Case Study.

OBJECTIVE: Recently, eye patching has been used as a technique for adjusting visual information. However, there are differing opinions regarding the influence of eye patching on visual attention in hemispatial neglect. Studies on eye patching do not usually consider the effects of differences in task difficulty or reaction space. Moreover, to date, no trial has used neglected-field eye patching. We investigated the effect on hemispatial neglect of hemi-visual field eye-patching glasses in a patient with left spatial neglect.
METHODS: The patient was an 86-year-old woman who had suffered a stroke. She had severe left hemiparesis and left spatial neglect. Three types of eye-patching glasses were used: right-field patching, left-field patching, and no patching. The line bisection test, the line crossing test, the star cancellation test, and the letter cancellation test were carried out for the three eye-patching conditions.
RESULTS: The line bisection test results showed rightward deviations for both left and right patching compared to no patching. For the line crossing test, there were no omission errors for any patching condition. In the star cancellation test, there were small differences between the three patching conditions. However, in the letter cancellation test, the fewest omission errors occurred during left-field patching, with the most notable improvement on the right half of the test paper.
CONCLUSION: The results suggest that neglected-field eye patching for hemispatial neglect might improve visual attention, especially the non-spatial aspects. ©2017 The Japanese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine.