Seeing without believing
How often do you ask your visually impaired patients the following question: “Do you ever see things you know aren’t real?”
This is an important question that is often overlooked. Patients rarely volunteer information about hallucinating for fear of people thinking they are crazy or psychotic. If the patient is symptomatic, it is important to provide information about Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS), which is characterized by complex, vivid visual hallucinations experienced by people with vision loss. A key factor in making the diagnosis is that the patient knows the visual images are not real – they are hallucinations, not delusions.
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