Amblyopia

Amblyopia
is the most frequent reason for impaired vision in children and young adults in the U.S.  It damage vision in one eye (monocular lazy eye) or both (binocular lazy eye) for children (children’s lazy eye) 

Treatment objectives:
A successful treatment must include two of the following:

  1.  Normalizing  vision;
  2. Improving binocular function. Frequently, amblyopia is accompanied with defects in binocular function i.e. two eyes cannot work together coordinately. A poor binocular function can be an obstacle for the improved vision to be kept or stabilized.

Monocular amblyopia
1. Western medicine treatment:
Generally speaking, the treatment efficacy is better at age younger than 7 with mild low vision.  Patching (covering the sound eye) is the most widely utilized treatment. According to an authoritative nationwide research, patching made  the vision improved for most of the amblyopic eyes, vision normal for 16%  of kids with mild low vision at age <7  (Arch. Ophthalmol.Vol 120,March.2002). On the other hand, according to this research, after  6 months of patching there was 7% of  kids having vision decreased in the sound eye, 12% small-angel strabismus.
2. Acupuncture treatment:
Acupuncture may normalize or improve vision for most cases even if the kids are  more than 7 years old or  with severe low vision or the previous patching did not make the vision better or normal. Moreover, the vision can be improved without patching and, therefore, with no risk of strabismus or vision decrease in sound eyes.

Binocular lazy eye
is a more challenging vision problem for professionals since there are no better treatments than corrective glasses and vision therapy in main stream medicine. Acupuncture may give most kids normal vision in both eyes, some in one eye and improved vision in the other. The normal vision can be reached as quick as in a few days or after one or two treatments for some mild cases. But a long- time maintenance treatment is still needed (months to years) to make the normal vision permanent.

Binocular low vision:
Some kids have low vision in both eyes which are otherwise normal when checked by ophthalmologists but no diagnosis nor treatment given except a suggestion of corrective glasses. If no improvement after wearing the glasses for some months, don’t delay any longer in seeking acupuncture treatment. The vision may be normalized or improved promptly. Some kid had kept changing glasses for 10 years before took  acupuncture treatment. Although improved, the vision couldn’t  reach normal any more. Take this as a lesson, don’t repeat it.

Adult lazy eye：
This is continuation of the children’s lazy eye and is widely believed impossible to be cured. Acupuncture may improve or normalize the vision in most cases. Starting treatment early gives better effects. The difficulty in adult lazy eye treatment lies in the binocular function correction which is much harder than that for children.

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