eScoop lenses: a design scooping up plaudits

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I first came across the eScoop lenses (Figure 1) at a training day run by Norville (the UK supplies of the lenses) some two years ago.¹ The lens, newly introduced from the Netherlands, caught my attention, not because of its bright yellow hue (I had previously had some success with visually impaired patients by supplying them with selective yellow or brown tints), but because of its incorporation of base up prism in both lenses as a means of moving the central scotoma off the direction of gaze to allow for better acuity.

I was initially sceptical, I have to admit, and had some questions about how a binocular prism would actually shift the scotoma rather than merely influence ocular gaze axis. Also some of the marketing literature appeared to imply the peripheral acuity outside the scotoma would be crisp, clear and colourful.