New game helps treat lazy eye in children

Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, is a common medical condition that affects the vision. This condition in most cases begins during childhood or infancy and often affects only one eye. The lazy eye may manifest with reduction of the vision in children’ eye, therefore the early diagnosis and treatment are most important. The formation of the eyes and the brain in the early childhood is essential in order to develop a good connection between the two.

The usual treatment for this condition involves patching the opposite healthy eye in order to force the lazy eye to work harder. But in many cases, children refuse to patch the eye because they often feel uncomfortable. This leads to not wearing the patch during the prescribed hours at school or at home.

This leads to constantly trying to find new ways of treatment that could help curing amblyopia. A new study was conducted by the researchers from the Retina Foundation in which participated 28 children diagnosed with amblyopia at the age between 4 and 10. The subject of the study was a new iPad game and its impact on the eyes of the children. In this study, the researchers divided the children into two groups of 14: the first used the game as a form of treatment and the second used the standard treatment of patching the healthy eye. The iPad game was published by Kelly et al. in JAMA Ophthalmology and the researchers designed special binoculars for the children.

The iPad game was created as a trial game, but after two weeks, the researchers found out that the group of children which played the iPad game with binoculars has shown significant improvement in the vision of in the lazy eye. Could this kind of games help in treating this common children’ condition of the eyes?