AMBLYOPIA ( LAZY EYE ) SCREENING
As primary eye care practitioners, we are the first to diagnose and treat a variety of ocular conditions. The role we play becomes even more vital in our youngest patients. Amblyopia, often diagnosed during a patient’s first eye examination, can be managed in a general optometric practice to dramatically improve quality of life in the developing child.
Amblyopia is defined as a decrease in the best-corrected visual acuity of one eye, or less frequently both eyes, in the absence of any structural or pathological changes. Also critical to this definition is the presence of a condition that causes the development of amblyopia, including either a significant anisometropic or isoametropic refractive error; a constant, unilateral strabismus; or some form of deprivation occurring before six years of age.
Treatment of amblyopia in children aged 3 to 5 years improves visual acuity. Risks of screening are outweighed by the benefit. Screening test options include the red reflex test, the cover-uncover test, the corneal light reflex test, visual acuity tests, autorefractors, photoscreeners, and stereoacuity tests.
The first line of treatment in amblyopia is spectacle correction. Patients should be given spectacles and then monitored regularly, generally every six weeks, for improvement in visual acuity.
The next step in amblyopia treatment is penalization of the better-seeing eye. This can be achieved by a variety of methods, the most common being patching to blur the sound eye. The treatment of amblyopia is depend on the conditions.