The Effect of the Prism Therapy on the Stroke Patients with the Visuospatial Neglect Preliminary Study

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of the prism which deviates the optical axis 10 degree rightward in the stroke patients who have visuospatial neglect and to evaluate how long it will last. METHOD: The subjects were 9 left hemiplegic patients who showed the feature of hemineglect. The prism goggle was applied and the patients were trained the midline point direction exercise. It's effect was evaluated by the line bisection test and the Albert test at the pre-training, immediate, 2 hours and 6 hours after the training respectively. RESULTS: The line bisection test and Albert test were not improved significantly at each evaluation time after the training. CONCLUSION: This result revealed the prism therapy does not have a significant effect on the line bisection task and Albert test in the hemineglect patients consistently. The line bisection result in the line located in the left or right side at the 2 hours after the training was improved but it could not exclude the training effect of the repetition of the test.