Amblyopia or Lazy eye is one of those conditions that your child's eye doctor or child eye specialist will treat with lazy eye exercises or eye patches for lazy eyes. Here the eye structure is totally normal but vision is poor. This poor vision is because of the poor development of the visual centres in the brain. More about that later in this text.
Let me start with a story. Cute twins arrive in this world and let's assume they are normal in all aspects. Someone decides to patch one eye of one twin and not remove it till the child is eight years old. What do you think will happen to the eye that had the patch?
The eye that had the patch would have very poor vision, if at all. The sad part is that few treatments in the world will bring the vision back in the patched eye. The other twin will have completely normal vision. Your child's eye doctor/eye specialist would most likely not offer you much after the child with the patch has crossed ten years of age. The eye exercises for lazy eyes/eye patches for lazy eyes only work in younger children. There are however, newer exercises that are now available and have been mentioned later in the article.
This eye which now has no vision is a LAZY EYE. A lazy eye thus means that the eye structure is normal, but there is no vision in that eye.
In humans, the vision develops after birth until up to 7-8 years of age. If there is an obstruction to that development during these seven years, vision will not develop in the eye. It's too late after 7 – 8 years of age, and vision cannot improve even after traditional treatments. There are, however, newer treatments available that can treat lazy eyes in adults or older children.
Amblyopia types depend on the causes of amblyopia.
Amblyopia's causes could be many. We have to consider all those eye conditions that obstruct normal visual development to analyse this.
A child has glasses but does not wear them
Let's say a child has a high eye power and does not wear his glasses. In that case, the eye is not seeing well. Now, the eye not seeing is not as bad as patching an eye but bad enough. So having glasses ( of a high number) and not wearing them could be a reason to develop a lazy eye. Not wearing glasses is one of the most typical amblyopia causes because this condition may go undetected.
A child is born with a cataract
The other obstruction could be a child born with a cataract in one eye and parents deciding not to get it operated on. The cataract is as bad as a patch because it does not allow light to enter the eye. Your eye specialists for children operate on this young cataract at six weeks of age. Ophthalmology as a speciality has a few emergencies, and this is one of them. Pediatric Cataracts are rarer amblyopia causes, but amblyopia is very severe or dense, which is why it needs urgent treatment.
A child has a squint
When a child has a squint, the eye with the squint is not used to seeing things because the brain stops using the squinting eye. Of course, the brain not using the eye happens only in young children and is called 'suppression'. The brain suppresses this squinting eye so that the child does not see two of everything. In other words, the brain does not want the child to have double vision. The brain suppressing the eye is like a patch, and vision in that squinting eye does not develop because of this suppression.
In the above situations, the child is not using the eye that has a cataract or squint or high numbered glasses. Thus, the visual development in that eye does not happen, and the child develops amblyopia or a lazy eye.
Wear glasses if you have to
If a child is less than seven years old and needs to wear glasses ( higher power or say more than + or – 2.0), the child should wear them so that vision develops. Once the vision develops and the child is older than eight years, the development is set and will not change. If, after that age, the child does not wear glasses, the potential for good vision will not decrease. All that will happen is that whenever the child does not wear glasses, he will not see clearly and when he does, he will.
Get operated for cataract
Likewise, suppose the child has a cataract which is the amblyopia's cause, and the eye specialist for your child has suggested a cataract surgery, parents should consider getting cataract surgery as soon as possible.
Get a routine eye examination
The most important step that parents can take to prevent lazy eyes is getting a routine eye check-up. Sometimes children have a lazy eye and know that they see poorly with one eye compared to the other. But, what they don't know is that it is not normal to see like this. Children feel that everybody around them also sees just the way they see. Also, the other eye is excellent, and they can carry on with their activities quite comfortably. So, they never complain, and by the time parents realise it could be very late.
Encourage school eye care programs
Thus, getting a routine eye test is critical in preventing lazy eyes. In fact, a lazy eye is the most important condition that school eye programs detect. Over the past many years, doctors from Eye Solutions have diagnosed many children with a lazy eyes and with timely treatment, it all ends well.
Treatment for Lazy eyes or amblyopia involves lazy eye exercises or eye patches for lazy eyes.
Watch this video below of a new treatment for lazy eyes. Our experience shows that it is very effective for all ages.
Traditionally lazy eye treatments were offered only upto 8-10 years of age. Newer form of treatments have since become available and are showing great results. Today we can treat lazy eye even in adult patients with the right exercises.
We will start with the commoner of the amblyopia treatments, a lazy eye patch. When a child's eye doctor sees a child with Amblyopia, they may advise eye patches for lazy eye treatment. As the name suggests, these are patches- Something like big band-aids. These oval, sticky, lazy eye patches stick on the stronger eye or the normal eye. With the stronger eye covered, the weaker eye has no choice but to try and see the world. This forceful viewing develops the visual centres in the brain. Thus, the vision in the weaker eye develops.
Making a child wear an eye patch for lazy eye treatment is not easy. The child cannot see well from the uncovered eye, so obviously won't like it. There is also an issue of something being on the face, which could irritate anyone.
There are online books available with fun stories about lazy eyes and how kids wear eye patches. The school teachers may also have to be spoken to and make sure other kids understand. One can even call it a pirates patch or a sibling could colour it as a game. Using these colouring or drawing books is like performing eye exercises for lazy eyes so that the weaker eye gradually develops better vision.
Sometimes, for amblyopia treatment, the eye specialist for your child may also prescribe specific lazy eye exercises. Exercises for lazy eyes are on a machine called a synaptophore. This machine forces both eyes to see at the same time. It thus causes the weaker eye to function, thus gradually improving vision.
Lazy eye treatment for adults used to be almost nonexistent. Because of training or otherwise, most eye doctors don't believe that they can treat lazy eyes in adults.
However, there are new forms of treatment that can treat lazy eyes in adults. These treatments are some or the other forms of exercise and are proving to be highly effective.
There are two treatments for adults
There are a few online softwares for lazy eye treatments. These softwares could be games or certain activities that both adults and children can do. For all computer-based exercises, there are certain specifications like screen size, distance from the computer and room lighting. Your child's eye specialist would sit and explain these specifications to you as parents. One may need to adjust the intensity of the colours and change the size of the objects.
In recent years, there has been a shift from patching to these computer exercises for lazy eyes. There is a technical reason for this. New research shows that it's better to have good binocular vision rather than have good monocular vision. With these exercises, both eyes get used to working together rather than vision developing only in one eye. Exercising with both eyes open is known as 'Binocular vision therapy'.
There are two forms of treatment
Orthoptek
Revital Vision
As mentioned previously, a lazy eye is a developmental problem. There is nothing wrong with the eyes. In other words, the problem lies in the brain's visual centres.
Yes, a cataract may have caused a lazy eye, or not wearing glasses could have caused a lazy eye, but it's not like the vision comes right back the minute you get a cataract surgery or start wearing glasses. It's only after lazy eye treatment like patches and exercises, that the vision will come back.
There are many centres in Mumbai for vision therapy. Some are related to eye yoga. We don't believe that this helps significantly. At the same time, we believe that these eye yoga centres don't harm the eyes either.
At Eye Solutions we offer two types of treatments, both of which have shown excellent results. One of these is performed at the clinic and one can be done at home.
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