Amblyopia, also known as “lazy eye”, is a vision problem that affects both children and adults.
With the advancement of vision therapy technologies, adult patients with lazy eye can now achieve successful treatment to improve their work productivity, sports performance, and quality of life.
What is Lazy Eye?
Lazy eye typically begins in childhood and causes a range of visual problems that can affect academic success, work productivity, and even sports performance.
Lazy eye can lead to:
- Reduced eyesight
- Eye fatigue
- Headaches
- Reduced concentration
- Poor depth perception
- Poor eye hand coordination
- Reduced reading speed and fluency
For many decades, it was thought that lazy eye can only be treated in children, and effective treatments for adults did not exist.
According to recent research, effective lazy eye treatments for adults can be successful and age is no longer a barrier.
New treatment modalities, such as computer-based therapy and virtual reality (VR) games, make vision therapy for lazy eye both interesting and engaging for the adult population and have proven to help many adults with lazy eye.
These new techniques are designed to reduce suppression—when the brain actively shuts off the affected eye to prevent double vision— and improve eye coordination and binocular vision.
What is binocular vision therapy?
While eye patching is a common lazy eye treatment used for children to improve vision in the affected eye, it has not been proven effective for adults with lazy eye.
Binocular vision therapy is an effective treatment for both children and adults with lazy eye, as it treats the suppression for improved eye coordination and binocular vision.
If you have lazy eye contact an eye doctor near you to have a comprehensive eye exam, you might be surprised to find vision therapy is the solution you have been looking for.
SEE RELATED: Guide to Vision Therapy for Adults
Is treating suppression better than patching?
Recent research studies have led to the following conclusions:
1. Binocular vision therapy has similar effective outcomes for both children and adults.
2. When compared to patching, vision therapy leads to greater binocular vision acuity.
3. Vision therapy yields improved binocular vision 3-6 times faster than patching therapy.
4. The chances of a recurring lazy eye is lower with vision therapy than with patching.
5. Some children show no visual improvement with patching and significant improvement with vision therapy.
With the advancement of vision therapy technologies, adult patients with lazy eye can now obtain effective binocular vision treatment to improve their work productivity, sports performance, and quality of life.
LEARN MORE: Guide to Vision Therapy for Adults
If you have lazy eye contact an eye doctor near you to have a comprehensive eye exam, you might be surprised to find vision therapy is the solution you have been looking for.
