I Wear My Sunglasses Indoors

A study objectively confirms the common observation that sunglass wearers in the neuro-ophthalmology office often have nonorganic visual loss.

Neuro-ophthalmologists commonly believe that patients who visit their offices wearing sunglasses indoors are likely to have nonorganic visual loss (NOVL). These authors performed a formal study of 34 patients who came into their clinic wearing sunglasses, out of 1377 consecutive patients. They compared objective features in those who wore sunglasses indoors and those who didn’t, assessing whether there was an organic reason for the patient to wear sunglasses, whether the evaluating clinician had a suspicion of NOVL based on other data of secondary gain (e.g., claiming disability benefits or worker’s compensation or filing a lawsuit), and whether the final analysis suggested that there really was no pathology.

Only 7 (20.6%) of the 34 patient…

Reviewing Author

Don C. Bienfang, MD