Re:0o (Score 1)

Amblyopia is blindness from any cause. What we are talking about here is amblyopia ex anopsia, that is blindness without obvious ocular cause - a well-formed eye that doesn't see well. Likely causes are malalignment or significant refractive difference between the eyes. It turns out that vision is learned. If you sew a kittens eye closed and then open it later it will not see. Same thing happens with kids with congenital ptosis. Now it also turns out that alignment of the eyes is also learned to a certain extent. Infants and yoga practitioners can move them independently - they are not yoked together like the front wheels of a car. There is a certain amount of "chicken and egg" problem here because if the eyes aren't aligned one will tend to be suppressed because if it isn't double vision will result. OTH if one eye doesn't see it will tend to drift because it lacks the stimulus of doubleness which keeps eyes aligned in the first place. Now it gets more complicated. Frequently only the central part of the vision of the deviating eye is suppressed and the peripheral part is fused with the vision of the other eye. This situation is more stable in terms of alignment than cases in which the deviating eye is totally suppressed. Those are the ones that get operated every 5-10 years for increased deviation. The whole system is pretty malleable in terms of training prior to age 6, iffy from 6-12 and virtually impossible to influence after age 12. No one know why, but it has to do with the same thing that lets you learn a foreign language without an accent if you are young enough. After a certain age that is nearly impossible. To evaluate this report you have to know the age of the patients and whether or not there was organic disease, prior treatment including glasses and surgery and a lot of other variables. Then there needs to be a matched group with another form of therapy.