Kids do OK emotionally with patch for lazy eye

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Children with “lazy eye”—technically called amblyopia—may resist wearing an eye patch or glasses to correct the condition, but these treatments are unlikely to cause long-lasting emotional harm to children, UK researchers report.

In a study of children with amblyopia, most parents reported that they sometimes had a hard time getting their children to wear an eye patch or glasses. Overall, however, children who wore glasses, a patch or both were just as happy as other children, according to a report in the journal Ophthalmology.

"This study found no evidence of long-term emotional implications for the child, hopefully giving reassurance to parents and encouragement to persevere with the treatment,” study author Susan Hrisos of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne told Reuters Health.

Amblyopia occurs when the brain favors one eye, leaving the other with much poorer vision. To correct the problem, the “lazy eye” must be trained to take over the job of seeing. One way to do this is to have a child wear a patch over the normal eye. This reliance on the weaker eye stimulates the part of the brain that is associated with visual development.

An estimated 2 percent to 4 percent of children have the condition, which needs to be corrected during a time of development that usually lasts up till age 7.

Hrisos and her colleagues studied 177 children who had vision impairment in one eye ranging from 20/30 to 20/120. The children, who were 4 years old at the start of the study, were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups.

Some preschoolers were immediately prescribed glasses and an eye patch, while others were assigned glasses immediately to be followed by a patch 1 year later. The remaining youngsters were not given glasses or a patch during the first year of the study.

Parents were asked to fill out questionnaires about their children’s treatment several times.

At ages 4 and 5, about half of children were sometimes reluctant to wear their glasses, according to parents. Children were even more reluctant to wear a patch, with three out of four parents reporting that they sometimes had difficulty getting their child to wear the patch.

Although some children were upset at having to wear glasses or a patch, that did not seem to stop them from being as happy-go-lucky as the next kid, Hrisos and her colleagues found. Children who received treatment were reported to be as happy, cooperative and good tempered as children who did not receive treatment.

In a finding that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever been called “four-eyes,” however, children who still wore glasses at age 5-1/2 were a little more likely to be teased than other children.

SOURCE: Ophthalmology, August 2004.

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