Which treatments are better than patching for amblyopia?

Patching is often the worst treatment for amblyopia for a number of reasons, including loss of self-esteem and exposure to bullying.  There are more effective and pleasant treatments available.  Read more...

map | directions | FREE parking | book an appointment 

The ultimate amblyopia infographic

The amblyopia experts at Vision Help have created this helpful info-graphic to help spread the word on the latest science in treating amblyopia (lazy eye).  We are re-posting it here to help spread the word on the latest treatments and the important information that patching for many hours a day is an out-dated and unnecessary practice.

Advanced treatments are available at our Vancouver vision clinic at at the clinics of developmental optometrists across North America.  To find a doctor near you, visit the College of Optometrists in Vision Development.

Related articles:

More evidence that patching alone is not good enough for treating amblyopia

Apr 29, 2013

Patching alone is not good enough for amblyopia ... - See for Life
Apr 22, 2013

Active therapy is more effective for amblyopia
Nov 20, 2011

Childhood vision disorders lead to adult problems 
Jun 13, 2011

More evidence that patching alone is not enough for amblyopia treatment in adults

There was an excellent post on adult amblyopia at mainosmemos.com about this study: Dichoptic training enables the adult amblyopic brain to learn

The summary of the study is as follows:

....Adults with amblyopia, a common visual cortex disorder caused primarily by binocular disruption during an early critical period, do not respond to conventional therapy involving occlusion of one eye. But it is now clear that the adult human visual cortex has a significant degree of plasticity, .... One possibility is an inhibitory signal from the contralateral eye that suppresses cortical inputs from the amblyopic eye. .... Here we provide direct evidence that alleviating suppression of the amblyopic eye through dichoptic stimulus presentation induces greater levels of plasticity than forced use of the amblyopic eye alone. This indicates that suppression is a key gating mechanism that prevents the amblyopic brain from learning to see.....

The way we have been treating amblyopia at our Vancouver clinic has always been a two-eyed or binocular vision centric approach.  We have seen first hand that this approach is far better than patching alone - it results in better, faster and more permanent results with better depth perception and all the other benefits that come with developing good functioning binocular vision.

Dr. Maino's comments on the study are spot on:

The research continues to show that adults with amblyopia have a treatable condition AND that amblyopia is not just related to decreased visual acuity in one eye. Amblyopia is a two-eyed-brain problem! When are my colleagues going to realize that you should not treat amblyopia by patching alone?

We wrote a similar post recently, see "Patching alone is not enough for amblyopia treatment".

Patching alone is not good enough for amblyopia treatment

This point, that was made in a study published in the September 2010 issue of the journal Optometry & Vision Science should be required reading for every amblyopia patient (or their parents):

amblyopia is an intrinsically binocular problem and not the monocular problem on which current patching treatment is predicated. Thought of in this way, the binocular problem involving suppression should be tackled at the very outset if one is to achieve a good binocular outcome as opposed to hoping binocular vision will be regained simply as a consequence of acuity recovery in the amblyopic eye, which is the current approach and which is often not found to be the case.

Developmental (behavioural) optometrists (which is what we are) treat amblyopia using the better approach. If you are looking for a developmental or behavioural optometrist, visit the website of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development.

For more information on amblyopia, including alternatives to patching, visit www.amblyopia.ca.