Impact of early physiotherapy intervention in managing homonymous hemianopia due to posterior cerebral artery infarct—a case report

Abstract

Homonymous hemianopia field loss can develop as a result of injury to any part of the retro chiasmal visual pathway and is frequently fatal for subjects. The most common cause of homonymous hemianopia in older persons is ischemic infarction of the occipital lobe and its causes are multifactorial, frequently providing a diagnostic challenge to the clinician and signaling the necessity for a thorough systemic health review. Hemianopia is a loss of half of the visual field in each eye in which the inner or nasal half of one eye and the outer or temporal half of the other eye is affected. We report a case of a 72-year-old male subject who visited our department with complaints of weakness on the right side with difficulty seeing on the right side for 3 days. After undergoing various investigations, it was found that there is an acute infarct in the posterior cerebral artery territory supplying the left medial temporal lobe, medial occipital lobe, left thalamus, and splenium of the corpus callosum. After a physiotherapeutic examination provisionally, he was diagnosed with right hemiparesis and homonymous hemianopia, and thus, we administered an early physical therapy intervention which was found to be effective.