Bill Harvey: Visions of you

I thoroughly enjoyed the first day of the Optometry Tomorrow 2022 conference, held in a Covid-free and flood-free Telford last weekend. Look out for a review soon.

Of the wide range of topics covered in the various lecture and workshop tracks, I was inevitably drawn to an excellent session on Charles Bonnett Syndrome (CBS), a topic that has long fascinated me. I do not remember the condition being mentioned at all during my undergraduate and pre-reg days, despite visual hallucinations associated with sight loss having first been described way back in 1760 by the man himself. The condition was only cited by psychiatrists as a syndrome in the 1980s and the first time I heard it being discussed in the eye world was in a lecture from fellow fan of the Fall, Dr Frank Eperjesi, in the 1990s. Surprisingly, for a condition with such significant impact, very few patients ever mention experiencing CBS and published prevalence figures vary wildly, from rare to extremely common.