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VR Treatment for Lazy Eye
1point618 writes "According to an article at the BBC, scientist have found a new way to correct amblyopia, or lazy eye, using a virtual reality system. The system works by giving some stimuli to the good eye, but more important stimuli to the bad eye, making it work harder to get stronger while keeping both eyes in use so as not to produce double vision. Supposedly, the system will do in 1 hour what used to take 400 hours, but I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out."
One of my sons has amblyopia. I recall that at age 2 there is something like a 98% chance of correcting it, and by age 9 there is a 2% chance. He tried the patch for quite a while with little improvement. A different doctor then had him get rid of the patch and had him use some drops in the 'good' eye instead. These drops would numb the focusing of the 'good' eye and allow the 'bad' eye to strengthen more by doing more work. It worked great!! He is now 12, long done with the treatment, and although his eyes are not perfect, they are very much improved. I only wish we had gone with the drops much earlier.