Popular children’s movies, combined with dichoptic training, offer a novel approach to treating amblyopia, according to a new report by researchers affiliated with the Department of Ophthalmology at McGill University and the Retina Foundation of the Southwest in Dallas, Texas.

The technique, published in the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS), involves the images of a popular movie sent to each eye individually, with blobs obscuring portions of the film. The blobs were shaped so that the entire screen could only be seen with binocular vision, with the image in the stronger eye presented in reduced contrast to overcome suppression.

”Children achieved 1-4 lines of improvement in visual acuity with just six sessions (nine hours) of dichoptic (both eyes looking at target at same time) movie viewing over two weeks,” explained Dr. Eileen Birch, of UT Southwestern Medical Centre. “Patching, by comparison, requires 120 hours of treatment to achieve 1 line of improvement in amblyopic children who have already been treated with spectacles for 12-16 weeks.”

Whether the improvement is persistent is yet to be determined, but the researchers are hopeful that these preliminary results will be confirmed in a controlled clinical trial.

Further information: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=157319&CultureCode=en

 

(Photo from Retina Foundation of the Southwest)