Amblyopia Therapy in Imam Khomeini Hospital of Kermanshah

Introduction: Amblyopia is reduced vision in an eye that has not received adequate use during early childhood.  The most common cause of unilateral visual loss in children is amblyopia with prevalence rate of 1-4 percent in pre-school children. However, effective treatments may prevent intensive complication. This study was done to assess the treatment effects of amplyopia patients who have referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital of Kermanshah during 1998 to 2000.

Materials & Methods: This study was a descriptive interventional before and after assessment. 56 amblyopia-diagnosed patients (86 eyes) with visual acuity less than 9 out of 10 referred to clinic of optometry were selected. In this research tools such as: ophthalmoscope, filter visioscope, dial astigmatic, prism bar, madoxwing, Snellen chart, titmus test and ischihara chart were used for diagnosis. Ophthalmologist performed amblyopia diagnosis and optometrist carried out treatment. Treatments included visual training, bleaching, part time patching, and full time patching and in some cases penalization carried out and descriptive & inferential statistics were used to analyze the data.

Results: There were 58.5 percent refractive amblyopia, 10.9 percent strabismic, 7.3 percent deprivative and the rest were involved by mixed problems.

The difference rate of steriopsis between after cure and before cure was 329.09 ±253.90 seconds figured by titmus stereo test. The average of visual acuity before and after treatment was 20/60 and 20/30 respectively.

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the considerable improvement was observed in amblyopia eyes with increased vision acuity about 3 lines in Snellen chart after curing the patients. We can conclude that treatment and curing of amblyopia may have good results. The earlier the treatment, the better the opportunity to reverse the vision loss. If not treated early enough, an amblyopic eye may never develop good vision and may even become functionally blind.