If you or someone you love is living with vision loss following a stroke or brain injury, it can be difficult to know where to start. Vision restoration is a specialized area of rehabilitation, and maneuvering through it to find the right services requires understanding both what therapies are available and how to have a productive conversation with your medical team. This post is designed to help you do both.
Is Vision Restoration Therapy Right for You?
NovaVision’s Vision Restoration Therapy (VRT) is an FDA-cleared therapy for improving visual function in patients with stable visual field deficits resulting from stroke, traumatic brain injury, inflammation, or surgical removal of a brain tumor. It is designed to support improvements in visual function by repeatedly stimulating areas of residual vision at the borderline area of the visual field deficit. The process is performed at home on a laptop or desktop computer, twice daily, six days a week, over the course of six months.
Patients who may be appropriate candidates typically have some residual (partial) vision, in one or both eyes, and are able to maintain focused attention for sessions of 15 to 25 minutes.
VRT is not appropriate for all patients. Those with a history of seizure disorders, particularly photosensitive epilepsy, should not begin VRT without explicit guidance from their neurologist or treating physician. Patients with severe cognitive impairments that affect sustained attention are generally not suitable candidates, nor are children, for the same reason. Individuals experiencing active inflammation of the eyes or the central nervous system should wait until the acute phase resolves before starting therapy.
If you want a preliminary, informal sense of whether VRT might be relevant to your situation, NovaVision offers an Online Visual Field Screening Test at no charge. It is not a diagnostic tool and is not a substitute for formal perimetry or physician evaluation, but it can be a useful starting point for your own understanding before speaking with a doctor.
Having an Informed Conversation with Your Physician
VRT is a relatively specialized modality, and not all physicians will be equally familiar with it. That’s not unusual in rehabilitation medicine, where the range of available therapies continues to evolve. The most productive approach is to come prepared.
Before your appointment, consider asking your physician about their familiarity with vision rehabilitation options following neurological injury, and whether a referral to a neuro-ophthalmologist or low vision specialist might be appropriate for your case. Bring any relevant documentation you have, including imaging results, prior visual field assessments, or records from your neurologist.
At your request, if your physician is open to learning more about VRT, NovaVision can provide clinical study summaries and educational materials directly to your doctor’s office, . The goal is to support an informed dialogue between you and your care team, not to bypass it.
How NovaVision Can Help
NovaVision works with patients and physicians throughout this process. We can provide educational resources, including published clinical studies and supporting documentation that your physician may find useful in evaluating whether VRT is appropriate for your situation.
The right therapy is the one that fits your specific condition, your clinical picture, and a treatment plan developed with your medical team. NovaVision’s role is to make that process easier.
To learn more or request physician referral assistance, visit https://novavision.com or contact the NovaVision team directly at https://novavision.com/dont-hesitate-to-reach-out/.
