Introduction

Low vision represents a condition of reduced visual capacity, bilateral and irreversible, such as to condition the autonomy of the individual. Recently, a new classification was introduced by the legislator for visual impairments that basically considers visually impaired those who have a visual capacity less than or equal to 3/10 in the best eye and blind those who have a visual capacity less than or equal to 1/20 in the best eye. The increase in average life and the new therapeutic possibilities within many pathologies have meant that the number of patients with visual impairment has been growing, therefore visual impairment today represents a social problem that involves a significant number of subjects in different age groups.

Symptomatology

The visually impaired is a person who has a very limited visual acuity, such as to hinder the performance of normal daily activities. In fact, the bilateral visual impairment has a negative effect on the quality of life of the person who is affected, given its poor autonomy. This condition is often determined by the combined action of multiple pathologies involving the visual apparatus. Although the visually impaired person has a visual residue, the damage suffered does not allow the affected person to easily perform even the simplest tasks, such as working on the computer, reading a book, driving or even recognizing the faces of people. However, the visually impaired person cannot be considered a blind person, precisely because he has a visual residue (variable from subject to subject). The most frequent causes of adult low vision in the Western world are: maculopathies (which include senile and myopic macular degeneration), juvenile hereditary maculopathies, inherited degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, elevated myopia, and glaucomatous and ischemic neuropathy.

Diagnosis

To diagnose low vision, during the specialized eye examination several tests are carried out to establish the measurement of different parameters such as distance and near visual acuity, refractive error, contrast sensitivity, reading speed, visual fields, glare sensitivity, color vision.

Therapy

60-80% of the visually impaired population can be helped by visual aids: this means that in Europe more than 8 million people could benefit from it. However, it has been shown that the mere prescription of the aid in most cases does not allow the patients to exploit their residual functional capacity. It therefore becomes essential a visual rehabilitation, with the aim of preserving its residual visual capacity and optimizing its use for the maintenance of autonomy in the activities of age, thus allowing a satisfactory standard of living. However, for several years, the Bietti Foundation has created a center for low vision and visual rehabilitation developing a rehabilitation process that allows the patient the best use of residual visual abilities. All this by organizing standardized therapeutic protocols, but at the same time personalized able to offer the best functional result and consequently a better quality of life.
In explanatory terms, it is not only a question of choosing the most suitable visual aid, depending on the type of pathology, the visual residue and the personal attitudes of the subject (hobby, reading, work done previously), but above all of teaching the patient to use a new retinal fixation for the best use of the prescribed aid. For this purpose, the rehabilitation program provides for the possibility of subjecting patients to sessions of microperimetric biofeedback: re-education through biofeedback is implemented with a series of exercise sessions in which the patients, guided by a visual and sound stimulus, learn to recognize their new retinal fixation point and to stabilize it over time with a subsequent improvement in reading ability, safety and speed of daily activities. The importance and relevance, therefore, of a center for visual rehabilitation arise precisely from epidemiological and social considerations. Low vision is a condition that affects more than one in 100 people in the general population. It has been estimated that there are 11 million visually impaired people in Europe in addition to 1 million blind people.