Family Eye Care and Children's Eye Center of New Mexico

Amblyopia is a common vision problem in children. Lazy eye is another name for this problem. This happens when the eye does not develop normal sight during childhood. Vision loss in children happens more often from amblyopia than from all other reasons combined. Usually, one eye is strong and one eye is weak.

One of the best ways to understand amblyopia is to think about being right handed or left handed. Most people have a dominant hand and it is very difficult to write or sign your name with the other hand. There is nothing wrong with the hand, but the brain can’t use one hand as well as the other. In the same way in amblyopia the patient may have basically normal eyes, but cannot see as well with one eye because the brain does not know how to see with the eye. Amblyopia is a neurologic (brain) problem.

Children may have amblyopia even when there is no problem with the eye. When the brain does not get a good image (picture) from a weak eye, it “learns” to see blurry with that eye. Only children can get amblyopia. If we do not treat amblyopia, it can cause permanent vision loss.

There is more than one cause of amblyopia, but all types result from one eye sending a poor image to the brain. If we can treat children with amblyopia early, many times they can get good vision. Treatments for amblyopia are different for each child. Treatments may include glasses, patching, and eye drops. Sometimes we can get the vision better if a child’s amblyopia is found early. The earlier we diagnose it the better. Since most children do not tell their parents that they are not seeing well, we recommend vision screening for every child.

Click on the link below for more information on amblyopia.
http://www.aapos.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=267