Objective: Assess usefulness of low vision occupational therapy (OT) in a small cohort of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients.

Background: PD patients report vision-related symptoms more frequently than the general population.¹ However, screening for low vision may not frequently occur at clinic visits, and the usefulness of low vision OT in the PD population has not been studied previously. We created a small pilot study that assessed the change in the Revised-Self-Report Assessment of Functional Visual Performance (R-SRAFVP) after one session of low vision OT in PD patients.

Method: We enrolled 33 PD participants from 2020 – 2021, and all PD diagnoses were confirmed by a UAB Movement Disorders-trained Neurologist. Participants completed the Visual Impairments in Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (VIPD-Q) and received one session of low vision OT provided at UAB. The primary endpoint was change in R-SRAFVP from baseline to 6-month follow up. If baseline or follow up R-SRAFVP data was incomplete, those participants were removed from analysis. R-SRAFVP was compared with a paired-sample t-test and all other variables were compared with independent samples t-test. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 28.0.1.1 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Statistical significance was defined as p<0.05.

Results: Twenty-seven participants completed the baseline and 6-month follow up R-SRAFVP and were included in analysis. There was no significant change in R-SRAFVP at 6 months (p=0.341). There were trends towards significance if the patient had a lower VIPD score (p=0.081) or did not have previously diagnosed eye disease (p=0.199). Age or the presence of hallucinations did not predict significant change in the R-SRAFVP score.

Conclusion: There was no significant change in the R-SRAFVP after PD patients received one session of low vision OT. However, there were trends towards significance if the patient did not have a history of eye disease or had a lower VIPD score. This suggests that low vision OT may be more useful in PD patients with milder vision-related symptoms. Therefore, we recommend considering screening PD patients for visual symptoms and referring for low vision OT when symptoms are mild. This study was limited by a small sample size and potential investigator bias, and a larger study is needed to confirm these findings.

References: 1 – Borm CDJM, et al. Seeing ophthalmologic problems in Parkinson disease: Results of a visual impairment questionnaire. Neurology. 2020 Apr 7;94(14):e1539-e1547.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/low-vision-occupational-therapy-for-parkinsons-disease-a-pilot-study-at-the-university-of-alabama-at-birmingham/