Active vision therapy for pseudophakic amblyopia.

PURPOSE: To study the benefit of active vision therapy using various pleoptic methods in pseudophakic amblyopic children and young adults.

SETTING

Daljit Singh Eye Hospital, Amritsar, India.

METHODS

This study comprised 160 consecutive pseudophakic amblyopic patients who had had iris-claw lens implantation for congenital or traumatic cataract. Their ages ranged from 3.5 to 25.0 years. Before active vision treatment, visual acuity was worse than 20/200 in 63 patients (39.3%), 20/200 in 77 (48.1%), 20/120 to 20/80 in 14 (8.7%), and 20/60 in 6 (3.7%). The methods included Haidinger brushes on the synoptophore, after images, CAM stimulator, drawings on the cheiroscope, Pigeon-Cantonnet stereoscope, video games with the amblyopic eye, and exercises for promoting eye-hand coordination. Mean duration of therapy was 6 months.

RESULTS

After therapy, visual acuity was worse than 20/200 in 31 patients (19.4%), 20/200 in 38 (23.7%), 20/120 to 20/80 in 41 (25.6%), 20/60 to 20/40 in 36 (22.5%), and 20/20 in 14 (8.7%). In 20 patients (12.5%), all younger than 15 years, visual acuity decreased within 1 month after treatment stopped. However, vision was rapidly restored after another session of active vision therapy.

CONCLUSIONS

Active vision therapy helped improve visual acuity in the majority of young pseudophakic amblyopes.