Amblyopia, or lazy eye, is the most common childhood visual disease, affecting about one to five percent of kids worldwide. Caused by abnormal visual development early in life, the weaker (or so-called lazy) eye often wanders inward or outward.
Children may have an increased risk of lazy eye due to premature birth, small size at birth, or a family history of lazy eye. If the issue isn’t treated (or treatment is delayed too long), a child may lose vision permanently in the affected eye.
Kids commonly are treated by wearing glasses for a lengthy period of time before patching (the eye with better vision is patched to stimulate the weaker eye). Alternatively, drops may be used to blur the vision in the unaffected eye to make the affected eye work harder.
Unfortunately, the current treatment method has shown poor results for many kids. “This often means that children patch or are treated with glasses or eye drops for a year or longer but the vision does not even reach half of normal vision, which is 20/40,” says Irene Gottlob, MD, professor of neurology at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and attending physician with Cooper and Inspira Neurosciences in Camden.
But now a new study published in The Lancet has found that patching sooner—without a long period of glasses-wearing first—helps to correct the disorder more effectively in most kids. One group in the study received patching for 24 weeks after 18 weeks of glasses; the other group received patching for 24 weeks after three weeks of glasses.
The results measured the improvement of vision. “We found that children younger than 5 years and 4 months are likely doing better with starting to wear glasses for a while,” says Dr. Gottlob, who was the senior author clinical lead in the study. “Other children have better visual results when starting patching sooner.” In general, younger children with less severe visual loss responded better to initial treatment with glasses.
Further research is necessary, but the study is a step toward helping provide more personalized care and better treatment results for kids with amblyopia.
—Arricca Elin SanSone is a New York-based health and lifestyle writer.
