Amblyopia is a vision development condition in which an eye fails to see normal vision even with contact lenses or glasses. It is also called as lazy eye or wandering eyeball, it occurs when the eye muscles of one eye is unbalanced resulting in loss of synchronization with other eye.Doctor checking a girl's eye

The affected individual develops dim vision as the visual stimulation through optic nerve becomes impaired. The "lazy eye" is ignored and the person uses the “healthy” eye.

Types Of Amblyopia

Strabismic Amblyopia

Strabismus amblyopia is a condition where the brain ignores the visual from misaligned eye to evade double vision. This leads to amblyopia in the lazy eye.

Refractive Amblyopia

Amblyopia is condition caused by unequal refractive errors in the two eyes, despite correct alignment of eye.

Deprivation Amblyopia

Lazy eye is caused by obstructing light from entering and being focused in a baby's eye, such as a congenital cataract. Immediate medical treatment of congenital cataracts is necessary to have normal vision.

Symptoms

  • Loss of binocular vision
  • Inability to detect shapes and to track various objects simultaneously
  • Reduced counting ability
  • Confused vision
  • Reduced perception of direction and motion
  • Inability to follow the moving objects
  • Poor depth perception

Treatment

Amblyopia is the condition that should be diagnosed and treated in early life, mostly before the age of 16, to avoid the permanent loss of vision.

Treatment of amblyopia aims at correction of underlying cause of the disease followed by controlled visual activity of the otherwise “healthy eye” in order to achieve the normal vision for affected eye. It is done with help of glasses and/ or eye patches.