Bill Harvey: Warriors on the edge

The impact of field loss has consequences that are still being discovered. A better understanding of the impact may have major benefits in the future management of people with conditions such as glaucoma.

An understanding of the extent of the visual fields of a sight impaired patient is essential if you want to understand how their loss may affect mobility, and whether help such as a guide cane is to be of any use. It is standard practice now to undertake a binocular Esterman style fields assessment to help in this regard.

Some practitioners find the prescribing of Peli lenses useful. With these, motivated patients are able to usefully use the image of their non-sighted field when it appears within their sighted field. When lawyers finally agree on the nature of electronic display spectacles, there will be great potential for field projection and expansion.