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Patch Might Not Be Best Treatment for Lazy Eye
Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Health
The patch may be a thing of the past when it comes to treating lazy eyes. Credit: Corbis
But there may be help: A new study shows acupuncture may be more effective than the patch.
Lazy eye afflicts up to five percent of people, and as many of 50 percent of those cases are caused by a difference in the nearsightedness or farsightedness between the two eyes, according to a report in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Younger kids can be treated with the right glasses or contact lenses, but for kids between ages of 7 and 12, that only works in about 30 percent of cases. The rest need to wear a patch, which brings the improvement rate up to about 66 percent, the report says.
The trouble with that is, by the time they're in elementary school, kids may not want to turn up to class looking as though their first words might be "Ahoy, matey!" Many kids end up taking the patch off, and those who don't "may experience emotional problems," the report says.
Researchers in China set out to find an alternative. They ran a trial with 88 children and gave 43 of them five acupuncture treatments a week. The remaining 45 children wore an eye patch for two hours a day. All the children wore corrective lenses and were told to do a minimum of one hour a day of near-vision activities for their lazy eye, things such as reading or typing, the report says.
After 15 weeks of treatment, the kids whose eyes were patched had visual acuity improvements of 1.8 lines on an eye chart, and those who had acupuncture could see 2.3 lines better, according to the report. Of those who were patched, 66.7 had improvements of two lines or more, compared with 75.6 percent of the kids who had acupuncture, the report continues.
Perhaps the biggest contrast came in the percentage of children for whom the problem was considered resolved: 16.7 percent of the kids who were patched, as opposed to 41.5 percent of those who had acupuncture, the report shows.
The study doesn't mean, though, that kids can abandon their patches in favor of tiny needles. While the treatment looks "promising," the authors note that their follow-up period was relatively short and that there are different styles of acupuncture.
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ReaderComments (Page 2 of 2)
12-15-2010 @ 2:39AM
Papa Joe said...I had same condition. At age 9, a surgical procedure was done on the left eye muscles at the Berkely Children's Hospital, but the right eye never received same treatment. Right eye wandered constantly until, at age 23, an optomitrist put prisms to cause eyes to focus inward. So...I was in glasses with strong refraction to correct vision and lazy eye syndrome. In my early 60's I developed full cataract on right eye and partial on left eye...both were removed and refracted lens inserted during same surgical procedures by Ophthalmolgist in Riverside. At that point I no longer wore glasses, but my right eye continued to drift outward. A few years later, the latter doctor referred me to an Ophthalmologist in Upland to have a procedure done to correct lazy right eye. Afterward, I no longer had to wear glasses, with or without prisms. I do, however, need glasses for close up reading length vision and most computer work. Much of what was relayed in your article seems to be treatment of a temporary nature. I suggest that if you have children with lazy eye syndrome, you contact an ophthalmologist who specializes in treating strabismus... I only wish this [now perfected] treatment was available when I was a child....
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