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. 2018 Sep 20;18(1):253.
doi: 10.1186/s12886-018-0922-z.

Effectiveness of binocularity-stimulating treatment in children with residual amblyopia following occlusion

Haeng-Jin Lee  1   2 , Seong-Joon Kim  3   4   5
Affiliations

Effectiveness of binocularity-stimulating treatment in children with residual amblyopia following occlusion

Haeng-Jin Lee et al. BMC Ophthalmol. .

Abstract

Background: To evaluate the effectiveness of binocularity-stimulating treatment in children with residual amblyopia following occlusion therapy for more than 6 months.

Methods: Of patients with amblyopia caused by anisometropia and/or strabismus, patients with residual amblyopia following more than 6 months of occlusion therapy were included. Subjects underwent one of the following types of binocularity-stimulating therapy: Bangerter foil (BF), head-mounted display (HMD) game, or BF/HMD combination (BF + HMD). Factors including age, sex, types of amblyopia, visual acuity, and duration of treatment were investigated. Baseline and final (after at least 2 months of treatment) visual acuity were also compared.

Results: Twenty-two patients with a mean age of 8.7 ± 1.3 years were included. Seven patients had anisometropic amblyopia, 8 patients had strabismic amblyopia, and 7 patients had combined amblyopia. After 4.4 ± 1.8 months of treatment, logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) visual acuity in the amblyopic eye improved from 0.22 ± 0.20 to 0.18 ± 0.15. Five of 22 patients (22.7%) gained more than 0.2 logMAR, including 1 of 10 patients (10.0%) in the BF group, 2 of 7 patients (28.6%) in the HMD group, and 2 of 5 patients (40.0%) in the BF + HMD group. No significant differences in clinical characteristics were identified among the three groups.

Conclusions: Binocularity-stimulating therapy is somewhat beneficial in children with residual amblyopia and might be attempted when children no longer benefit from sufficient long-term period of occlusion therapy.

Keywords: Amblyopia; Binocular treatment; Binocularity-stimulating treatment; Residual amblyopia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study received ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Seoul National University Hospital. The Ethics Committee study protocol number was 1706–205-866 and the IRB granted a waiver of consent for this retrospective chart review study.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The developed software program named “Ice Cream Truck” game. a Example of blur-applied screenshot of the game. It separate the 3D images and control the visual inputs into the both eyes by increasing the contrast and intensity of the 3D target to the amblyopic eye (right) and decreases those to the normal sound eye (left). b 16 level of Gaussian blur method applied in this software program
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Distribution and change of visual acuity in children with residual amblyopia following occlusion for more than 6 months. Five patients (22.7%) presented more than 0.2 logMAR improvement of visual acuity: 1 of 10 patients (10%) in the BF group, 2 of 7 patients (28.6%) in the HMD group, and 2 of 5 patients (40%) in the BF + HMD group
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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