Vision therapy for amblyopia in older children and adults

Amblyopia is a decreased visual acuity without any identifiableorganic cause in the eye. It is the main cause of poor unilateral vision inchildren and believed to occur during a period of neural plasticity early inlife. Traditional amblyopia treatment is based on depriving the ‘‘good†eyewhile optimizing the visual experience of the amblyopic eye mainly byocclusion. The benefit of patching fades as the child grows and there iscurrently no treatment available to successfully treat amblyopia in a child morethan 9 years. In children more than 10 years only one-quarter–one-half of children responding tocombined treatment of spectacles and patching.

Recentstudies suggest that repetitive practice can improve performance on a varietyof visual tasks in adult humans with normal visual capacities. Studies onperceptual learning indicate that practice can result in improvement of manyvisual tasks in adults, including visual detection or discrimination oforientation, Vernier offset, stereo information, and contrast sensitivityfunction. Our hypothesis is that perceptual learning will modify visualfunctions in even adult patients of amblyopia and improve visual acuity,contrast and stereopsis in these patients. The aim of our study is to assessthe efficacy of perceptual learning exercises in older children and adults withamblyopia who have failed patching.