Homonymous Hemianopia in Childhood (HHIC)

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Homonymous Hemianopia in Childhood (HHIC)

  • IRAS ID

    260492

  • Contact name

    Jugnoo Rahi

  • Contact email

    j.rahi@ucl.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health

  • Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

    NIHR300562, NIHR application number

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    4 years, 0 months, 0 days

  • Research summary

    Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is the loss or absence of vision to one side, affecting the same half side in both eyes. This is most often due to an injury of one side of the brain such as a stroke, trauma or tumour. In children this can be difficult to diagnose as they can have additional disabilities, which masks the symptoms of vision loss. The consequences of losing half of your vision at a young age are unknown. Vision is involved in all aspects of life and development.
    In adults with HH, rehabilitation methods have been trialed to help patients. One intervention is the use of prisms in glasses, which optically expand the non-seeing visual field from zero to up-to 30 degrees at distance for navigational vision. These have been proven to help adults with HH compared to placebo glasses, but there has yet to be a trial looking at the use of these in children.
    The project will consist of two connected pieces of work. The primary phase of the study will examine children with a diagnosis of HH to investigate the clinical spectrum, and undertake questionnaires to measure vision related quality of life and visual function. Functional evaluation will also include electrophysiological and eye movement studies. If the recruited children met the inclusion criteria for phase two they will then be given the option of taking part in a pilot randomised cross-over trial of prism glasses. The order in which the prism glasses and the "sham" glasses are given will be randomised, with each worn for four weeks. Visual function will be measured behaviourally using a questionnaire based tool, and functionally utilising an eye movement recording of a visual search task.

  • REC name

    London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    21/LO/0563

  • Date of REC Opinion

    12 Oct 2021

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion