Interocular differences of the visual field in normal subjects.

One way of judging if a visual field is abnormal, particularly when a patient has unilateral or asymmetric disease, is to compare the suspicious visual field to that of the normal eye. This assumes that in normal individuals the two visual fields are symmetrical. To determine the extent of normal symmetry, the authors examined the central visual fields of both eyes of 20 normal subjects with program 30-2 of the Humphrey perimeter. The inter-ocular sensitivity difference at single pairs of locations ranged from 0 to 9 decibels with large differences occurring most frequently in the upper field. Confidence intervals constructed from this set of normal data predict that asymmetry exceeding 6 decibels should occur in fewer than 1% of test locations and that asymmetry of overall mean sensitivity exceeding 1.4 decibels should occur in fewer than 1% of normal subjects.