New treatment for lazy eye

 A new study on lazy eye has  found that programmable electronic glasses help improve vision in children just as well as the more traditional treatment using eye patches. This “digital patch” is the first new effective treatment for lazy eye in half a century , according to the results from the first U.S. trial of the device presented at AAO 2015, the 119th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

The electronic glasses used in this study combine vision correction and occlusion. The lenses can be filled to fit a child’s vision prescription. Because the lenses are liquid crystal display (LCD), they can also be programmed to turn opaque, occluding vision in the left or right eye for different time intervals, acting like a digital patch that flickers on and off.

Researchers at the Glick Eye Institute at Indiana University recently tested the effectiveness of occlusion glasses compared to patching in a randomized clinical study. They recruited 33 subjects with lazy eye between age 3 and 8 who wore spectacles to correct their vision. One group wore an adhesive patch for two hours daily. The other wore Amblyz™ occlusion glasses for 4 hours daily. In the study, the lens over the lazy eye switched from clear to opaque every 30 seconds. After three months, both groups of children showed the same amount of improvement in the lazy eye, gaining two lines on a reading chart. 

“When you talk to adults who underwent childhood treatment for amblyopia, they will tell you that wearing a patch was the worst thing ever,” said Daniel Neely, M.D., a pediatric ophthalmology professor at Indiana University who led the study. “With these electronic occlusion glasses, the child learns that the lens will be clear again in just a few seconds so they may be more cooperative with the treatment. For parents who have struggled with drops and patching, this could be a great alternative.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the Amblyz occlusion glasses as a medical device. They are available in the United States from eye care professionals for around $450.