Extended daily eye patching effective at treating stubborn amblyopia in children

The standard treatment for amblyopia, a condition of poor vision in an otherwise healthy eye, is patching: covering a child's better-seeing eye with a patch for two hours a day to improve vision in the weaker eye. Doctors often suggest increasing the daily duration of patching if children stop making progress, even though there have been limited data showing this approach actually works. However, a recent report by the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigators Group (PEDIG) provides evidence that increasing patching from two to six hours a day is effective at treating persistent amblyopia. The research was funded by the National Eye Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health.
Source: News from NEI - Category: Opthalmology Tags: News and Events Source Type: news