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The prevalence and clinical characteristics of Charles Bonnet Syndrome in Danish patients with neovascular age‐related macular degeneration
Author(s) -
Singh Amardeep,
Sørensen Torben L.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
acta ophthalmologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.534
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1755-3768
pISSN - 1755-375X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-3768.2010.02051.x
Subject(s) - macular degeneration , medicine , geographic atrophy , danish , ophthalmology , autofluorescence , lesion , atrophy , population , surgery , philosophy , linguistics , physics , environmental health , quantum mechanics , fluorescence
. Purpose: To investigate the prevalence and clinical characteristics of the Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) in a group of Danish patients with neovascular age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) and to study whether CBS is associated with a specific retinal morphology. Methods: Three‐hundred consecutive patients with neovascular AMD attending assessment consultations following variable series of ranibizumab therapy were actively asked whether they had symptoms of CBS. If they responded positively, a detailed questionnaire was orally administered to inquire into the details of the symptoms. Detailed optical coherence tomography and autofluorescence was performed. A comparison was made between retinal morphology of a randomly selected equal number of patients without CBS to patients with CBS. Results: Twenty‐five (8.3%) patients of 300 had hallucinations attributable to CBS. The median lesion size – measured as total area with increased autofluorescence – in the CBS group (median 14.2 mm 2 ) was not significantly different from the non‐CBS group (median 16.2 mm 2 ); however, the patients with CBS had significantly larger areas of geographic atrophy (median 2 mm 2 ) compared to patients without CBS (median 0.3 mm 2 ) (p = 0.002). Conclusion: CBS is not uncommon in an unselected population with neovascular AMD, and symptoms of CBS may be associated with larger areas of geographic atrophy.