Illusions Optometrists Explain Amblyopia

From birth up until the age of approximately 11, the visual system is in the process of developing. This development concerns not just the eyes, but the parts of the brain responsible for vision, as well as the nerve pathways connecting the eyes to the brain. Over this period of development, if the eyes aren’t seeing clearly, then the pathways to the brain responsible for processing detailed aspects of vision do not get used properly, and hence don’t develop properly.

The end result of this is that once the period of development is over, if the eyes haven’t seen clearly growing up then the vision will be incapable of becoming completely clear even with the right strength of glasses, because although the eyes themselves may be perfectly healthy, the vision pathways in the brain haven’t developed well enough to allow clear vision to be processed and seen. This condition is called amblyopia, and it usually affects one eye (the brain shuts down the input from the blurry eye and just uses the clear one so that vision develops properly on the better side but not the blurry one), but can occasionally affect both eyes.

The risk of amblyopia is the reason that optometrists will sometimes prescribe glasses for children even if the child feels their vision is fine and that the glasses don’t help, as glasses will help the vision in both eyes to develop properly rather than the vision developing properly only for one eye. It is therefore critical that the child wears the glasses all the time, if instructed to do so, until they are over the age of 11, and the visual development period has finished.

After the age of 11 wearing, or not wearing glasses won’t make any difference to the development of the visual system. Sometimes children will be required to wear an eye patch for a few hours each day; the idea here is to force the visual system to use the blurrier eye, so that the vision pathways on this side have a chance to develop and improve the best level of vision that the worse eye is capable of seeing. This is especially important should anything happen to the good eye later in life.

To find out more about eye exams Tauranga, eye clinics Tauranga and eye exam appointments please go to http://www.illusionsoptom.co.nz .