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HOW CAN AMBLYOPIA BE PREVENTED?
Amblyopia can be prevented by getting vision screening tested at an early age. Children should undergo eye check-up by the age of five.
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IS THERE ANY ALTERNATIVE TO PATCHING?
No there is no alternative treatment other than patching. Sometimes a child can be given Atropine eye ointment to the better eye with or without patching. This forces the child to use the eye with poor vision for distant and near activities.
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HOW IS AMBLYOPIA TREATED?
“Lazy eye” could be corrected. A lazy eye simply needs to do more assignments. The “power” of the lazy eye is accurately corrected so that when proper glasses are worn, that eye can focus appropriately and send clear signals to the brain. By this time, the brain is already trained to ignoring images from the lazy eye and processes only the images from the “better eye.” The challenge of the treatment lies in training the brain to see the images from the “lazy eye.” The doctor covers the better eye, which forces the brain to recognize images from the lazy eye.
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WHAT CAUSES AMBLYOPIA?
The eye operates similar to a camera. Both are capable of taking continuous shots. All these shots or pictures are automatically processed by the brain. The brain processes only those pictures which are clear. When the child does not wear the correct glasses, that eye fails to focus clearly. It repeatedly takes blurred images and sends them to the brain. The brain in turn rejects these images from the “faulty” eye and only forwards the images from the working eye. Hence, the “faulty” eye despite its ability to “see” cannot see. Problems encountered in visual processing make the eye lazy.
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WHAT IS LAZY EYE OR AMBLYOPIA?
“Lazy Eye” is a term commonly used by Pediatric Ophthalmologists. The medical term for lazy eye is amblyopia. An eye is termed lazy when the child does not see with that eye despite wearing glasses.
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HOW IS STRABISMUS TREATED?
Alignment of the eyes is important to ensure that both the eyes work together (Binocular Single Vision). Children might need early intervention to avoid lazy eye. Treatment of Strabismus could be done with the help of glasses, prisms, eye exercises and /or eye muscle surgery.
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CAN STRABISMUS LEAD TO LOW VISION ?
When the eyes are not perfectly aligned the deviated eye has a chance of developing poor vision.The brain tends to ignore the image of the deviated eye to avoid diplopia and this results in poor visual development.This is often referred to as Strabismic Amblyopia.
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WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF STRABISMUS?
The eye may be deviated inwards as in the case of Esotropia, or it may be deviated outwards, which would be a case of Exotropia. In case the eye deviates upwards, the condition would be called Hypertropia, alternately, if it leans downward, it would be a case of Hypotropia.
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Is winter season better for cataract surgery?
This is a misconception that is believed by some. Visual outcome depends on the quality of the surgery, not the season. In this era, phacoemulsification surgery enables smaller incision, which helps in early wound healing and ambulation. The patient can take a bath in only a few days after the surgery.
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Would glasses be required post the cataract surgery?
If you opt for standard cataract surgery with intraocular lens (IOL) implantation, you will need reading glasses and possibly computer glasses. There are cataract surgery options that can reduce or sometimes even eliminate your need for glasses. In particular, the premium implantable lenses such as multifocal IOL can provide excellent outcomes that enable many people to be free from spectacles for the greater part of their day.
Another option is monovision cataract surgery, by which the power of the single vision IOL is customized in each eye to expand the range of clear vision when the two eyes function in unison. In this scenario, the dominant eye provides sharper distance vision, and the non-dominant eye provides sharper near vision.
