[Impact of congenital versus acquired monocular vision as self-reported vision]

When the vision in one eye is preserved (monocular vision) and there is high risk, low prognosis and/or limited resources to the fellow eye surgery, it is unclear if the benefit of binocularity outweighs the reorientation for monocular vision. The goal is to quantify the impact of the quality of vision of both binocular and monocular condition, and in this latter case, between congenital and acquired.

Patients with visual acuity (VA)>0.5 in each eye underwent a structured questionnaire of 14 questions (VF-14), which the score 0-100 indicates the level of patient satisfaction with their vision, ranging from low to high respectively. Epidemiological data and scores of the four groups were recorded and analyzed statistically.

The interview by the VF-14 with 56 subjects revealed that the highest score was similar between controls and patients with congenital monocular vision, and low and intermediate levels were obtained by individuals with acquired monocular vision and bilaterally blind, respectively (p<0.001). The more difficult activities for individuals with acquired monocular vision were to identify small print, recognize people, to distinguish traffic lights and watch TV.

The study confirmed that the vision loss has an adverse impact on the performance of such activities being higher in congenital than in acquired monocular vision. The data suggest that rehabilitation measures should be considered to improve the quality of vision in intractable diseases, high risk or low prognosis.