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Have you ever heard of Charles Bonnet? He was a Swiss naturalist, philosopher, and biologist (1720-1793) who first described the hallucinatory experiences of his 89-year-old grandfather, who was nearly blind in both eyes from cataracts. Charles Bonnet Syndrome is now the term used to describe simple or complex hallucinations in people who have impaired vision.
Symptoms
People who experience these hallucinations know they aren't real. These hallucinations are only visual, and they don't involve any other senses. These images can be simple patterns or more complex, like faces or cartoons. They are more common in people who have retinal conditions that impair their vision, like macular degeneration, but they can occur with any condition that damages the visual pathway. The prevalence of Charles Bonnet Syndrome among adults 65 years and older with significant vision loss is reported to be between 10% and 40%. This condition is probably under reported because people may be worried about being labeled as having a psychiatric condition.
Causes
The causes of these hallucinations are controversial, but the most supported theory is deafferentation, which in this case is the loss of signals from the eye to the brain; then, in turn, the visual areas of the brain discharge neural signals to create images to fill the void. This is similar to the phantom limb syndrome, when a person feels pain where a limb was once present. In general, the images that are produced by the brain are usually pleasant and non-threatening.
Treatment and prognosis
If there is a reversible cause of
Read more: Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Visual Hallucinations
Fireworks Eye Injuries Have Skyrocketed in Recent Years
Fireworks sales are exploding across the country through the Fourth of July. As retailers are blazing their promotions, we and the AAO are shining a light on this explosive fact--the number of eye injuries caused by fireworks has rocketed in recent years.
Fireworks injuries cause approximately 15,600 emergency room visits each year, according to data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The injuries largely occurred in the weeks before and after the Fourth of July. The CPSC’s fireworks report showed that about 2,340 eye injuries related to fireworks were treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 2020, up from 600 reported in 2011.
To help prevent these injuries, the Academy has addressed four important things about consumer fireworks risks:
- Small doesn’t equal safe. A common culprit of injuries are the fireworks often handed to small children – the classic sparkler. Many people mistakenly believe sparklers are harmless due to their size and the fact they don’t explode. However, they can reach temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees – hot enough to melt certain metals.
- Even though it looks like a dud, it may not act like one. At age 16, Jameson Lamb was hit square in the eye with a Roman candle that he thought had been extinguished. By age 20, Lamb had gone through multiple surgeries, including a corneal transplant and a stem cell transplant to try to restore partial vision to the eye.
- Just because you’re not lighting or
