Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: To study the factors that may affect the amblyopia treatment including initial visual acuity, causes of amblyopia, the age of starting therapy, refractive error and existence of stereopsis. Methods: This study was a retrospective chart-review study. Two hundreds and forty-two patients were selected from National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) Strabismus-Amblyopic Clinic . The study criteria were amblyopia children with strabismus, anisometropia or high refractive error, starting amblyopia therapy in NTUH, no organic disease in the eye and not a premature baby or no developmental problems. Results: Part I: Initial visual acuity: The strabismus group and the myopia group had poor initial visual acuity and the astigmatism group had better initial visual acuity. Patients with existence of stereopsis had better initial visual acuity. In hyperopia group, the higher refractive error had lower initial visual acuity. But such relationship was not found in other groups. And younger age had lower initial visual acuity. Part II: Therapy prognosis (the final best visual acuity): The myopia group and strabismus group had lower ratio to reach 0.9 snellen visual acuity level. And the amblyopia group which initial visual acuity was lower than 0.2, had higher failure ratio to reach 0.9 snellen visual acuity level than the group which the initial visual acuity was better than 0.2. No stereopsis group had higher failure ratio to reach the 0.9 snellen visual acuity level. Part III: The visual improvement rate: There is no significant visual improvement rate difference in the groups according to different causes of amblyopia. Younger than eight year-old had faster improvement rate than age older than eight year-old. The result of mean improvement rate was 1.1 LogMAR lines over three months. Conclusions: The cause of amblyopia was an important factor by our study. The myopia group and strabismus group had lower initial visual acuity. After control the factor of initial visual acuity factor, the myopia group and strabismus group still had significant lower proportion of better final visual acuity after therapy in initial lower visual acuity group. However, the hyperopia group had much more proportion of better visual acuity after therapy. The result of mean vision improvement rate was 1.1 LogMAR lines over three months. There is no difference by the causes of amblyopia.
Keywords: amblyopia • visual acuity