Amblyopia (lazy eye) is the leading cause of preventitive blindness in children.  There are different forms of amblyopia that exist.

1. Refractive Amblyopia-  This is usually due to a high refractive error in one vs. the other (anisometropia) or sometimes both (isoametropic) if the refractive error is high in both eyes.

2. Strabismic Amblyopia- This is due to an obvious constant eye turn.  This is what most people think of when they think about lazy eye.  In other words the person involved has one of their eyes turned in, out, up, or down while the other eye is looking at you or whatever target the person is fixated on.

3. Form Deprivation Amblyopia-  This is a form of amblyopia that is a result of something interferring with the normal refraction of light in the eye.  Examples include a congenital droopy eyelid (ptosis) or congenital cataracts that interfers with the normal retinal image processing of the brain’s visual cortex.

All three types of amblyopia are treatable if caught early in the patient’s development.  In other words the onset of amblyopia is from 1-8 years of age, but if the condition is caught early in a patient’s life than the prognosis is much more favorable than when trying to treat the condition later on in life as an adult.  The reason for this is due to the plasticity of the brain at an early age.  In other words it’s a lot easier to teach a “new dog new tricks vs. an old dog new tricks” as the saying goes.  This means a child’s brain has a much easier time relearning things than if you try later on in life due to this critical development period of the brain that exists between 1-8 years of age.  

I encourage all parents to get their children’s eyes checked at 2-3 years of age in order to catch it early and treat it.   This way the condition is caught early enough before it becomes a “bad habit” in order to salvage single clear comfortable binocular vision.

Only 4% of children are detected to have a vision problem with school and pediatrician visual screenings.  When actually 25% of children actually have a vision problem. 

The message here is to have an eye care professional perform a comprehensive eye exam on your child at 2-3 years of age so that these potential visual conditions are caught early and treated before they become a real problem with the child’s ability to learn and perform daily functions.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Eye Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.