Never Too Late to Treat Kids With Lazy Eye
Never Too Late to Treat Kids With Lazy Eye
Even 17-Year-Olds May See Better if Treated, but Early Treatment Still Best
The older group -- aged 13 to 17 -- wore eye patches for two to six hours a day and performed near visual activities. They did not get eye drops, as the researchers worried that this would cause too much interference with their daily activities.
"Doctors can now feel confident that traditional treatments for amblyopia will work for many older children," Paul A. Sieving, MD, PhD, director of the National Eye Institute, says in a news release. "This is important because ... many of these children do not receive treatment while they are young."
It's still vitally important to treat children with lazy eye as soon as possible, argues David G. Hunter, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.
In an editorial accompanying the study, Hunter notes that most of the older kids in the study did not benefit from treatment.
"The take-home lesson is that considering how difficult it is to treat older children for amblyopia, it is vitally important to identify and treat amblyopia early in life, well before the age of 7 years," Hunter writes.
Never Too Late to Treat Kids With Lazy Eye
Even 17-Year-Olds May See Better if Treated, but Early Treatment Still Best
The older group -- aged 13 to 17 -- wore eye patches for two to six hours a day and performed near visual activities. They did not get eye drops, as the researchers worried that this would cause too much interference with their daily activities.
"Doctors can now feel confident that traditional treatments for amblyopia will work for many older children," Paul A. Sieving, MD, PhD, director of the National Eye Institute, says in a news release. "This is important because ... many of these children do not receive treatment while they are young."
Early Lazy Eye Treatment Still Important
It's still vitally important to treat children with lazy eye as soon as possible, argues David G. Hunter, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.
In an editorial accompanying the study, Hunter notes that most of the older kids in the study did not benefit from treatment.
"The take-home lesson is that considering how difficult it is to treat older children for amblyopia, it is vitally important to identify and treat amblyopia early in life, well before the age of 7 years," Hunter writes.
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