Hope for Older Children with Lazy Eye

In the United States 3% of children may have vision loss during infancy or childhood. This condition occurs when one eye is favored by the brain over the other. The eye with no healthy vision does not receive input from the brain thereby limiting the development of sight. This disease is otherwise known as amblyopia or lazy eye. The National Eye Institute which is under the auspices of the National Institute of Health recently funded a study to ascertain whether lazy eye can be corrected past the age of 7. In the past years, eye doctors have concluded that lazy eye must be corrected before the age of 6 or 7, otherwise any treatment onwards for the condition will no longer be effective.

Forty nine eye centers were involved in the study and majority of the 517 subjects showed improved condition from amblyopia. Age should not be considered as a factor whether treatment measures should be taken for lazy eye as pointed out by Michael Repka, M.D. working under the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Repka, a pediatric ophthalmologist further stated that teenagers with lazy eye can be remedied. A lazy eye or an amblyopic eye can improve because of the brain’s plasticity as studied by Susan Cotter, O.D., a pediatric optometrist practicing at the Southern Califo
ia College of Optometry. Through learning, the functions of the brain can be altered, as indicated in the concept of neuroplasticity.

The lazy eye can be forced to learn to work and eventually, sensory information can be processed by the brain until there is adaptation. Consequently, there is improvement of vision. In the study, 2 groups of randomly selected children were the subjects. The first group wore prescription glasses while those in the second group either had eye glasses and an eye patch or eye drops and an eye patch. Close up and near vision activities were then carried out by the two group such as reading and drawing, activities that are considered visually stimulating. Due to the restriction of the patch and the eye drops, close up work entailed more effort for the subjects in the second group to use their lazy eye.

Once the subjects were capable of reading two or more lines from an eye chart with their lazy eye, that is an indication that the treatment was effectual. In the 7 to 12 year old bracket 53% of the subjects in the second group were able to read two or more lines with their lazy eye whereas only 25 % of the subjects in the first group could do so. In the 13 to 17 year old bracket, 25% of the subjects in the second group were considered successfully corrected. Only 23% of the amblyopic subjects of the same age bracket in the first group showed progress.

Forty seven percent of teenagers who have been previously treated for lazy eye who had glasses and patches on and executed visually stimulating activities had enhanced vision but only 20% of those who merely wore eye glasses showed development. Children with strabismus should likewise be initially treated for lazy eye to correct the eye muscle imbalance. Cotter further stated that surgery may not be helpful for lazy eye. If the lazy eye still persists after surgery, the other eye with 20/100 vision will be blurry causing the brain to have difficulty in fusing the perceived image as a whole as Cotter had stated.

As to the influence of visually stimulating activities on amlblyopia or lazy eye, further researches and studies are being proposed.