Hemispatial sunglasses: Effect on unilateral spatial neglect

Objective: To investigate whether using glasses shaded on the non-neglected side would lead to less unilateral neglect during pencil-and-paper activities. Design: Descriptive study of ten patients. One remarkable case is described in detail. Setting: Rehabilitation medicine department in an urban general hospital. Patients: Ten hemiplegic patients showing left unilateral neglect during pencil-and-paper activities. Intervention: Use of glasses in which the right half of each lens was shaded by a darker lens like those used in sunglasses. Main Outcome Measures: For unilateral neglect: (1) deviation from marking the middle of a 20-cm horizontal line; (2) number of lines left unmarked on the left hand portion of a page of 40 randomly oriented lines; (3) degree of failure to copy a representation of a cube. Results: Among the ten patients, improvement was mixed for each of the three outcome measures. One patient, however, demonstrated dramatic and lasting improvement in functional activities by wearing the hemispatial sunglasses. Conclusion: Hemispatial sunglasses appear to have a potentially specific effect on visual neglect in certain patients with right hemispheric lesions. Further investigation is necessary to determine the nature of this effect and its scope of applicability. (C) 1997 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.