Any Ophthalmologists here?

[mytinyfiredancers]

My little girl has been given a eyepatch to wear. She is 3.5. She's had glasses for a year after our HV noticed one of her eyes didn't 'look right'. When her vision was tested in hospital they found that one eye is normal and the other has a severe astigmatism and is very short sighted. After 11m of glasses it was no worse but no better so we now have the patch for 3 hours a day.

It's been caused by forceps damage. On examination the ophthalmologist we saw said her cornea is scarred and he could see where there was healed damage to the eye socket.

Amazingly she's taken well to the patch and wears it with no fuss for 3h a day.

I can't seem to get an answer as to how long she'll have to wear it, or if we can expect a significant improvement? Is there anything we can do to help while she's patching? We know she'll have glasses for life, but I'm really looking to do whatever I can to help her - her bad eye has such poor vision currently that it wouldn't be at driving standard if she were older.

Hi OP - i’m An optometrist (although I do have a higher qualification in children’s vision too).
It usually takes about 80 hours of patching to get one line of improvement on the letter chart. But, it varies massively with each individual (and that’s why they wouldn’t give you a definite answer).

The amount of improvement you get will also depend on how much damage there is to the cornea.

You can help by doing visually stimulating activities whilst she’s wearing the patch, books/games on ipad that sort of thing. Make sure if the patch is on her glasses rather than her eye, that she’s not peeking round the side.

That's great, thank you. She'll have done approx 180 hours of patching by her next appointment so fingers crossed we'll see an improvement. I'm just glad she's not upset by it. Honestly I was dreading it but she's just taken it in her stride. Definitely no peeking!

We were told the cornea has healed but that it's scarred but that's all I know. She did have the most god awful bruising, full on swollen black eye and her head was black and blue so I shouldn't be surprised poor love.