Articles about Eye Health and Disease 2003
 

Success of Treatment of Severe Amblyopia (lazy eye) with Less Patching

(From Holmes JM, Kraker RT, Beck RW, et al. Ophthalmology. 2003;110(11):2075-2087)
A Randomized Trial of Prescribed Patching Regimens for Treatment of Severe Amblyopia in Children

Amblyopia, or "lazy eye" is the most common cause of visual loss in young children because it is often diagnosed too late in the child's life to be treated, or the treatment itself is not successful, often because of non-compliance on the part of the patient.  Patching of the preferred eye is one way to treat amblyopia, as this forces development of the "lazy eye".  However, the stigma associated with wear a patch often reduces the compliance of this otherwise successful method of treatment.

Over the last year (2003), several studies on the treatment of amblyopia have been conducted, including one that found that a shorter patching regimen was as effective as a longer one among children with moderate amblyopia. In the study cited above, researchers focused on the amount of time that patching is necessary in the treatment of severe amblyopia (visual acuity in the range of 20/100 to 20/400).

They conducted a prospective, randomized, multicenter trial to compare the effectiveness of 6-hour occlusion therapy (patching the preferred, non-amblyopic eye) vs full-time patching in 175 children (ages 3 to less than 7 years) with severe amblyopia. After 4 months of treatment, visual acuity was similar in both groups: an average improvement of 4.8 lines of visual acuity was found in the 6-hour patching group compared to 4.7 lines of improvement in the full-time patching group.

Similar to findings of the earlier study on moderate amblyopia, this study demonstrated that a shorter patching period (6 hours) was as effective as the full-time patching period for severe amblyopia. These results are important, because the shorter treatment might be better tolerated by patients.  Another significant factor is that children were treated early in the course of the disease process (under age 7) - prompt diagnosis and treatment of amblyopia is extremely important.

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