Beware of Lazy-Eye - Know the symptoms

One eye sees clearly and the other eyes see a blur, the good eye and the brain will ignore the weaker eye and the inhibition process results in permanent decrease of vision of the affected eye. This eye problem is termed Amblyopia or lazy eye. This condition is not due to any eye diseases and cannot be correctable by glasses or contact lenses. 1-4 per cent children are affected by lazy eyes.

An eye that drifts off centre by just a degree is enough to cause lazy eye, but the untrained eye will not notice a disparity until one eye turns in or out by about five degrees. The most common causes of amblyopia are constant strabismus (constant turn of one eye), anisometropia (different vision/prescriptions in each eye), and/or blockage of an eye due to cataract, trauma and lid droop. Refractive errors like hyperopia, astigmatism and myopia are other factors to cause lazy eye

Lazy eye patients look normal, but their vision is impaired because the brain is favoring the other eye. Lazy eye is a condition in which the observer sees nothing and the patient sees very little. Brain and eyes have to work together to produce proper vision. Left untreated in childhood a permanent visual disability in adulthood occurs. Usually lazy eye goes untreated, undiagnosed at early age because the patient had been comfortable using his normal eye.

Early detection improves the chances of successful correcting lazy eye. Parents should have the awareness of symptoms of lazy eyes in their children as visual development starts at birth and reaches the peek by two years of age. Lazy eye symptoms includes,

• Shaking of the eyeballs.
• Deviation of the eyes observed on their offspring.
• They could never learn to catch or hit a ball as their eyes do not know how near or far objects are.
• Eyes that appear to be crossed
• Holding the head in awkward positions while looking at distant objects.
• Frequent squinting.
• Constantly closing or covering one eye.
• Blurred vision.
• Double vision.
• Poor depth perception (of vision).
• Eyes do not appear to work together.
• A squint (upwards, downwards, outwards, or inwards).

Treatment for lazy eye includes 'forcing' the brain to use the weaker eye and thus stimulating its visual development. This is done by patching the better eye. Lazy eye patches an opaque, adhesive patch is worn over the stronger eye for weeks to months. Patching stimulates vision in the weaker eye and helps the part of the brain that manages vision develop more completely. The schedule of patching is decided by the eye doctor depending on the degree of amblyopia and the age of child.

Another method is medication of the eyes. Few drops of a drug called atropine is placed in the stronger eye once a day to blur temporarily the vision so that the child will prefer to use the eye with amblyopia.Treatment with atropine also stimulates vision in the weaker eye and helps the part of the brain that manages vision develop more completely. Lazy eye treatment for adults includes Lazy eye surgery for lazy eye correction. Special exercise for lazy eye is devised to help the patients. Photoscreening is now used to detect 'lazy eye' which records the pattern of light reflected through each of the child's pupils as the child's eyes are photographed.