Amblyopia Care

Amblyopia (“lazy eye”) is when one eye (or sometimes both) cannot see as clearly as expected, even with the best corrective lenses. This impacts not just eyesight, but eye teaming, depth perception, tracking, and reading skills. Amblyopia is frequently due to one eye having a much higher prescription than the other eye, or strabismus (an eye turn). Sometimes amblyopia is caused by congenital factors like a congenital cataract or eyelid abnormality that blocked one eye’s development.

Amblyopia care consists of a combination of prescriptive lenses with vision therapy and can benefit not just children, but adults.

Classical amblyopia treatment meant patching the “good” eye. Newer research demonstrates that therapy supporting binocularity (eye teaming), instead of complete dark patching, is more effective. This is the paradigm shift: it is not about strengthening the “weak” eye, but instead retraining the brain to use both eyes as a team. Read more about amblyopia therapy research in our vision therapy library.

The first step in determining if lenses and/or vision therapy would be helpful is to schedule an evaluation with our team.