Colour vision, visually evoked potentials, and lightness discrimination in patients with multiple sclerosis

Abstract

The authors examined visual functions in 176 patients suffering from definite multiple sclerosis (MS), in order to find out the most sensitive tests for the detection of optic nerve pathology in this disease. The results of various colour vision tests, visually evoked potentials, and a lightness discrimination test were compared with best corrected visual acuity. In the category of MS patients with normal visual acuity, the combination of the test results of pattern reversal visually evoked potentials and Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue test was able to detect optic nerve pathology in 709b of patients. When visual acuity had dropped to a level of 0.6, more than 95% of the test results were abnormal. Normal test results, with a visual acuity of 0.2 or less, suggest that the low visual acuity is due to amblyopia and not MS-related optic neuropathy.