What is lazy eye (or Amblyopia)?

Amblyopia, or put in a more popular way, lazy eye syndrome, is a kind of vision development disorder, which especially occurs in one’s childhood when some underlying causes block the proper development of vision in one eye. Left unattended, this kind of syndrome can cause a series of serious symptoms that will hamper the quality of life and even cause vision loss. Vision impairment becomes permanent because as the child’s brain matures, and it will “ignore” the image coming from the eye with the poor eyesight. Provided an amblyopia-stricken patient take no measures to treat this stubborn vision defect, patient’s brain tends to use one eye oftener than the other, thus literally ignoring and neglecting the “lazy eye”. Rather than call it lazy eye, we would prefer to call it the work of lazy brain, for it is not really an organic visual defect, but a chronic development problem in the brain. Notwithstanding its far-reaching consequences, its symptoms and causes and treatment options are still available for a better understanding of lazy eye, also for better treatment.

What are the symptoms of lazy eye?

Children afflicted with lazy eye syndrome always find it extremely hard and agonizing to focus with just one of their eyes, when the other eye with perfect normal eyesight do the work and help see clear the images. By and by, the eye with vision development disorder is marginalized, receiving no clear images, and the brain will not receive clear data and even start to ignore it. Thus, lazy eye is labeled and badly-impressed.

Common symptoms of lazy eye include:

1. Blurred vision

2. Double vision

3. Poor depth perception (of vision)

4. Eyes fail to cooperate and synchronize.

5. Squinting (upwards, downwards, outwards, or inwards)

When children have these signs and symptoms, the odds are high that they are assaulted by lazy eye. At this time, the most urgent thing is to go to the optometrist or ophthalmologist’s and to have a full and comprehensive check of your children’s eyes. They can offer professional and precise diagnosis of your children’s vision condition.

What causes lazy eye syndromes?

Things that trigger lazy eye syndromes are multiple and myriad. If it causes children to divert their eyes or blur their vision, it has the capability to provoke lazy eyes. Possible causes are described below to shed a little bit light.

1. The commonest cause of lazy eye goes to strabismus (squinting), which cause eyes to turn sideward. Strabismus can be caused by an imbalance in the muscles that position the eye. Due to this muscle imbalance, two eye’s ability to track things in a synchronized manner is greatly impeded. Little by little and by and by, lazy eye is about to come into being and ignored by the brain.

2. Another frequent cause of lazy eye syndrome belongs to anisometropic amblyopia, which means that a refractive error occurs due to myopia, presbyopia, or astigmatism (the surface of the lens is uneven, causing blurred vision). When confronted with a refractive error, each eye receives light in a different direction after negotiating the lenses. If a child is so unfortunate to have anisometropic amblyopia, he will be more long-sighted or short-sighted in one eye than the other, resulting in amblyopia developing in the eye that is affected in a more serious fashion.

3. The least common cause can be stimulus deprivation amblyopia, which means that one eye (or sometimes both) is prevented from seeing, and becomes lazy, owing to some kind of eye surgery or injury.

What treatment options are there?

The sooner you find these symptoms, the easier the treatment, the better the effect. In order to treat lazy eye, there are a few options available.

1. Strabismus surgery. To eliminate the biggest opponent who is mainly responsible for the existence of lazy glasses is first and foremost. To straighten eyes, followed by some sorts of vision therapy, your children can have both of their eyes work synchronically, receiving the same clear image in both eyes.

2.  Patching is necessary. Patching the “diligent” eye (as opposed to the lazy one) that functions normally, in such way, it coerces the lazy eye to work and force the brain to pay attention to the visual input from the amblyopic eye and enable normal vision development to occur in that eye.

3.  Vision exercises – this involves different exercises and games aimed at improving vision development in the child’s affected eye. Experts say this is helpful for older children. Vision exercises may be done in combination with other treatments.