In neurological diseases, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) are a reliable electrophysiological technique. The electrical performance of the visual pathways reaches up to the optic nerve and calcarine cortex is expressed by VEPs.
In neurological diseases, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) are a reliable electrophysiological technique. The electrical performance of the visual pathways reaches up to the optic nerve and calcarine cortex is expressed by VEPs.
These potentials offer a non-invasive approach of investigating the operation of the human visual system by measuring neural pool activity in response to stimuli, regardless of the patient's level of consciousness and attention. Clinical applications for VEPs include neurological pathologies affecting the optic nerve and/or brain as well as ophthalmological retinal pathologies.
In addition to being utilised for surgical intra-operative monitoring, VEPs have also been employed to measure visual acuity in non-verbal infants, persons with low intellectual capacities, or possible malingerers.
Importance of VEP Test
Neuropthalmological field
VEPs are used in the field of neuro-ophthalmology for a number of clinical applications, including the quantification and monitoring of functional damage in optical neuropathies of various inflammatory, demyelinating, compressive, ischemic, traumatic, hereditary, degenerative, and/or toxic-metabolic origin; Using the outcomes of functional retinal tests, it is possible to distinguish the main differences between disorders of the optic nerve and those of the retina.
Neurological field
A multifocal involvement of the white matter of the brain is a hallmark of the inflammatory disease of the white matter known as multiple sclerosis. When it points towards the location and size of demyelination outbreaks, the clinical manifestations might vary greatly, although certain regions of the central nervous system appear to be more frequently affected than others. Optic neuritis, which occurs clinically in over 50% of patients, is the disease's primary symptom in more than 20% of cases.
The care of these individuals may benefit from using measurements of VEP latency and of the thickness of the retinal nerve layer obtained by optical coherence tomography, which have been indicated to correlate with measurements of disability.
Surgical intraoperative monitoring
Several protocols have investigated employing VEPs test for intraoperative visual function monitoring, although the available research and clinical evidence in this area are quite scant.
By improving the technique's reproducibility and interpretability and working to make it more dependable and simple to integrate it into the operative workflow, the use of total intravenous anaesthesia, the development of light-emitting diode technology, electroretinography, and electroencephalography have all increased the reliability of VEP neuromonitoring.
