Can Laser Eye Surgery treat Amblyopia (lazy eye)?
It’s among the most common questions asked at Laser Eye Surgery clinics: Are you able to treat and improve amblyopia? Or as it’s more commonly known as, lazy eye.
Amblyopia is the most common cause of visual impairment among children, affecting around two to three in every hundred.
Unless caught early and treated during childhood, the condition persists into adulthood. This is often difficult, and thus amblyopia is the most common monocular (one eye) impairment among young and middle-aged adults.
Expert surgeon Mr Glenn Carp on treating lazy eye with Laser Eye Surgery
In the video below Mr Glenn Carp answers the question: Can Laser Eye Surgery treat amblyopia?
As Mr Carp explains, the condition is caused when a child has had some obstruction to their vision. This may be in the form of a refractive error, which was not treated with glasses, an injury, or another condition like cataracts.
As a result of the blockage to the vision, the eye only learns to see to a certain point. And as around the age of 7 certain pathways that link the eye to the brain finish their development, if the full vision stimulation is not achieved before this point, the eye remains underdeveloped.
Therefore, Laser Eye Surgery is only able to refine the vision in an amblyopic eye to the level it can achieve with a glasses prescription. That goes to say, Laser Eye Surgery is unfortunately not able to refine the vision further, due to the underdeveloped pathways from when the child was very young.
But am I still suitable for Laser Eye Surgery?
While Laser Eye Surgery cannot specifically treat lazy eye, suitability for Laser Eye Surgery depends on the best corrected visual acuity of the lazy eye. Many patients with mild lazy eyes have had successful outcomes after Laser Eye Surgery.
Check out our testimonial page to find out about the experiences of Laser Eye Surgery patients.
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