Electronic Glasses Effective in Amblyopia Treatment

A new study shows that programmable digital glasses for treating amblyopia (lazy eye) work as well as eye patching.

Researchers at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN, USA) conducted a randomized clinical study among 33 children with lazy eye (between three and eight years of age) to test the effectiveness of occlusion glasses, as compared to eye patching. One group of the children wore an adhesive patch for two hours daily; the other wore Amblyz occlusion glasses for four hours daily, with the liquid crystal display (LCD) digital lens over the eye with better vision switched from clear to opaque every 30 seconds.

The results revealed that after three months, both groups of children showed the same amount of improvement in the lazy eye, gaining two lines on a reading chart. According to the researchers, the programmable digital glasses are the first new effective lazy eye treatment in 50 years. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), held during November 2015 in Las Vegas (NV, USA).

“When you talk to adults who underwent childhood treatment for amblyopia, they will tell you that wearing a patch was the worst thing ever,” said lead author and study presenter Prof. Daniel Neely, MD, a pediatric ophthalmologist at the Indiana University Glick Eye Institute. “With these electronic occlusion glasses, the child learns that the lens will be clear again in just a few seconds so they may be more cooperative with the treatment. For parents who have struggled with drops and patching, this could be a great alternative.”

Amblyz glasses, a product of Xpand (Ljubljana, Slovenia), are based on an electronic shutter controlled by a preprogrammed microchip incorporated into an optical refractive lens. The liquid crystal shutter is suspended in a gel-like liquid between two thin glass plates coated with a thin polarizer film. When an electric voltage is applied, the spatial orientation of the suspended molecules is changed and the polarity of the light is rotated, applying short intermittent occlusions of the strong eye.

Amblyopia is an eye disorder characterized by an impaired vision in an eye that otherwise appears normal. Visual stimulation either fails to transmit or is poorly transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain for a continuous period of time. It can also occur when the brain "turns off" the visual processing of one eye to prevent double-vision, for example in strabismus. Detecting the condition in early childhood increases the chance of successful treatment, especially if detected before the age of five.

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Indiana University
Xpand