Systematic review of visual rehabilitation interventions for oculomotor deficits in patients with brain injury

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Secondary to brain injury, many people develop eye movement disorders (oculomotor deficits). To clarify, optimize, and standardize the development of oculomotor rehabilitation programs, we systematically reviewed the literature on vision rehabilitation interventions for oculomotor deficits in brain injury, focusing on those with broad clinical feasibility.

Materials and Methods: We searched MEDLINE (PubMed), CENTRAL, Scopus, and CINAHL databases for key title terms “oculomotor”, “rehabilitation”, or a related term, and “brain injury” or a related term in the title or abstract. We excluded case reports of a single patient, studies of non-oculomotor visual deficits, and articles in which the intervention and assessment methods were not explicitly identified.

Results: Nine articles were included, six of which utilized computer-based training programs to elicit characteristic fixation, saccades, pursuit, vergence, and accommodative movements. Within the entire sample, interventions ranged from 3 to 10 weeks, and involved 2 to 5 training sessions per week.

Conclusions: Oculomotor rehabilitation interventions showed some efficacy in treating patients with brain injury; however, there were very few studies overall. Several eye movement types – fixation, saccades, pursuit, vergence, and accommodation – can be elicited manually by therapists. We eagerly await the development and implementation of new intervention programs for broad-based clinical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Oculomotor deficits
• vision
• rehabilitation
• brain injury
• systematic review

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

All data contained in this manuscript are published; the sources and a summary thereof are detailed within the manuscript in Table 1.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.