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Children's health

Advice on Lazy Eye, Orthoptic etc

4 replies

Foresttwo · 16/03/2018 13:00

My DD who is 5y 2m has just been diagnosed with a lazy eye. It was picked up at the school vision checks as she is long sighted in one eye (+5.5) the other eye has very good vision - as expected for her age so we never noticed a problem. She has been to the Orthoptic dept at the local hospital and we were given a prescription for glasses to be worn all the time. The Orthoptist said that she would see us again in 8 weeks and see how much difference the glasses have made to see if patching is necessary. The glasses we ordered after appt from opticians are going to take a week or so to come, so in actual fact it will only be 7 weeks or so. Not sure if this makes a difference and should put her appt back...
She said the current level of her eye is such that it would be 6 hour a day patching. If it improved a bit this would go down to 2 hours-obviously a huge difference.
Does anyone know if she will be tested by the Orthoptist with her glasses on at the next appointment, or are they hoping her sight will have improved without the glasses? I should have asked them this, but didn’t think at the time. Really want her to be in the 2hr category if we need to patch, so conscious to give enough time for some improvement.
Must admit I’m a bit confused now, as they said they were hoping to improve the eye and even them up- however not sure if this means without glasses or with glasses. The optician did say she thought she would be able to chose to wear or not wear glasses at times in the future - she did say it may be a bit fuzzy which confused me as it’s not fuzzy for her now, as it’s the good eye doing the work.
Anyone who has been through a long sighted/lazy eye thing, or had any success would be great to hear from!

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dementedpixie · 16/03/2018 17:48

That's a fairly high prescription for long sight especially if it's only one eye. They will do tests with and without the glasses. I would imagine that she will have glasses long term. Patching is used when one eye sees better than the other as it forces the other eye to work and hopefully can get to the stage where both eyes have the same level of sight (with glasses on).

My dd is long sighted and has worn glasses since 18 months old. She will always need them. Her prescription is not that different to your dd but affects both eyes. She patched for 2 or 3 hours a days for ages to improve the sight in her bad eye

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Rodders92 · 16/03/2018 21:44

Hi Forest , I’m an orthoptist, when one eye needs a much stronger glasses prescription this is called anisometropia. Without glasses the lazy (amblyopic) eye does not form a clear image on the retina and therefore the vision doesn’t develop normally. Once glasses are worn the vision will often start to improve, in some children glasses will be the only treatment needed but others need occlusion. If the vision is improving with glasses wear this is known as refractive adaptation and research says that the maximum improvement just from wearing glasses can take up to 6 months. Wearing glasses does not change the longsightedness and the important test is how much better the eye is seeing with the corrective lens. Occlusion treatment is either done using patches or atropine eye drops are another alternative. If patching is done the 2 hour or 6 hour thing is based on all the research done by the PEDIG studies which is research done on large numbers of children to determine the most effective amount of patching needed based on how reduced the vision is to start with. To start with the best thing is to make sure your daughter wears her glasses full time

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Foresttwo · 17/03/2018 07:21

Thanks both for your replies. Rodders thanks so much for posting and giving the condition a name. I’ve been able to do some more research now and understand it a lot better. I asked lots of questions at the time, but once home thought of a lot more! I just want to do the very best for her and give her the best possible chance of improvement. Hopefully the 7ish weeks will be enough to see a good improvement.

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underneaththeash · 17/03/2018 08:03

Just to add to rodders excellent advice, she's too little yet, but 8/9 year olds often do really well with contact lenses and she could potentially just wear one lens.
Because her glasses will magnify things more in one eye than the other visual perception is often also better in contact lenses if there is a significant difference in prescription between the eyes.

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