Visual hallucinations in patients from an ophthalmology clinic and medical clinic population

Although visual hallucinations have been associated with patients with visual disorders, no study has specifically examined whether visual hallucinations are indeed more prevalent than in a general medical population. In this study, 127 consecutive visual disorder patients and 100 consecutive general medical patients were screened for complex visual hallucinations. A total of 6.3% of visual disorder patients and 2% of general medical patients had visual hallucinations. Interestingly, the two medical patients with visual hallucinations also had visual disorders. Factors significantly associated with visual hallucinations were female sex (p = .029) and lower cognitive score (p = .001). Data from a previous study of patients with the visual disorder age-related macular degeneration were combined with this study to increase the sample size of visual hallucinators. Factors significantly associated with visual hallucinations in the combined sample were female sex (p = .015), living alone (p = .019), having hearing problems (p = .047), older age (p = .013), and lower cognitive score (p < .001). Implications and future research are discussed.