Night Blindness Diagnosis & Treatment in Uganda

The complaint we hear most often is a slow adjustment when moving from a bright room into a dim one — patients describe struggling to make out faces once dusk sets in, or feeling unsteady walking or driving after dark. Sensitivity to oncoming headlights at night is another common report, frequently described as harsher than it used to feel.

Globally, vitamin A shortage remains the single leading cause of night blindness, and fortunately also the easiest to correct, typically confirmed through a straightforward blood test. Beyond nutrition, the same complaint can arise from congenital stationary night blindness, which stays static over time, from early-stage retinitis pigmentosa, which does not, or from a dense cataract or significant myopia interfering with peripheral vision. Each of these paths leads somewhere quite different, which is exactly why pinning down the cause matters just as much as treating the symptom.

Dark adaptometry measures, with real precision, how long the eyes need to regain sensitivity after bright-light exposure — often the single clearest way to distinguish a nutritional cause from a retinal one. We pair that with electroretinography to test rod function directly, a serum vitamin A level, and a careful history: a symptom that has stayed stable over time points away from progressive retinal disease, while one that keeps worsening points toward it.