Successful Improvement of Eyesight with Therapy for Patients with Lazy Eye Proven Possible at Later Ages by Many New Scientific Studies

Successful Improvement of Eyesight with Therapy for Patients with Lazy Eye Proven Possible at Later Ages by Many New Scientific Studies

 .....There is still a general belief that amblyopia can be treated only up to various ages, such as seven (7), ten (10) or twelve (12) years old. This belief persists despite many recent scientific studies and decades of clinical reports on treatments that yield significant visual improvement and best outcomes in older children and even adult amblyopes (see references). Notably, a 2005 multi-site study by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health demonstrated that children, ages 13 to 17, could improve vision in their amblyopic eye with a combination of glasses, patching, and near vision activities while wearing a patch. No patients over the age of 17 were included in that study so that the report does not set an upper age limit for successful treatment in older children or adults. Since that 2005 study, numerous additional studies have been done on visual improvement of lazy eye in patients over twelve years of age, including adults. Yet, these new discoveries about the treatment of lazy eye at later ages have generally not found their way into general medical eye care practice......

Comment: To read more on this topic, click the title above. DM

Importance of visual evoked potential in amblyopic children

....VEP is a very important tool to understand the complex amblyopic mechanism. Although the superior VA of the sound eye, the VEP alterations demonstrate the functional abnormality of the eye considered “good”. More studies are necessary to explain why the sound eye in amblyopic children cannot be considered completely normal therefore, special attention should be paid to amblyopic treatment, as patching can have a negative effect on the sound eye.....

 Comments: The better seeing eye in amblyopia is not so "good" after all. Optometry has know this for some time....and that is why optometric vision therapy is important to improve all aspects of vision function in the patient with amblyopia. DM

 

Vaccines Can Save Children's Lives

....The U.S. has registered the worst outbreak of whooping cough in over five decades this year, with many states reaching epidemic levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the numbers of reported cases is already double as high compared with 2011, and with children preparing to return to school, the number of those who will develop whooping cough or even be killed by the disease could continue to rise, if children are not vaccinated appropriately.....

 

The Future is Already Past: DIY refractions: Disruptive innovation that affects science, people and the economy

Dr. Geoffrey Goodfellow (soon to be president of the Illinois Optometric Association) and I recently wrote a column on Do It Yourself refractions: Disruptive innovation that affects science, people and the economy for the American Optometric Association News.In this article we discussed the future of refractive care where you would do your own refractions and then pick up your new glasses from a kiosk at the mall when the 3D printer finishes making them for you. Well, maybe the future is actually closer than what we thought...

RiteAid has this in its stores now...

You still need a prescription written by a doctor, but this will take various measurements you need before you can order a frame, show you varous frames, and then will let you use your credit card to buy them.

We know from research that the Internet mail order glasses you buy tend to have many problems associate with quality and accuracy (Safety and compliance of prescription spectacles ordered by the public via the Internet. Nearly half of prescription spectacles delivered directly by online vendors did not meet either the optical requirements of the patient's visual needs or the physical requirements for the patient's safety.).

I may be a skeptical consumer (or a biased eye doctor), but somehow $59 for a frame and lenses seems too good to be true.  

 I wonder how these Rite Aid glasses would stand up to scrutiny? DM

Evaluation of a new technique to evaluate the visual pursuit in infants

Results show that the new technique is robust and efficient for recording infants’ visual pursuit under clinical conditions.  ....

 Comments: Read more about this by clicking the title above. DM

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