Abstract
Purpose :
Visual acuity testing plays an important role in conventional evaluations of the outcomes of anisometropic amblyopia treatments. However, it has been suggested that visual function impairments that cannot be detected by conventional visual acuity measurements exist in patients with amblyopia who are considered successfully treated on the basis of visual acuity remediation criteria. Functional visual acuity (FVA) measurement is a dynamic assessment of visual acuity over time, which helps evaluate one aspect of quality of vision (QOV). In this study, we performed FVA measurements of both eyes in patients with successfully treated anisometropic amblyopia, and compered the results of treated eyes to those of contralateral normal eyes.
Methods :
Twelve patients (6 boys, 6girls; age 8.2 ± 2.7 years) with successfully treated unilateral anisometropic amblyopia (the best conventional decimal visual acuity better than 1.0) were enrolled. FVA, the visual maintenance ratio (VMR), and the average response time were recorded for both eyes of all patients using an FVA measurement system. The differences in FVA values between eyes were analyzed (paired t-test).
Results :
The mean LogMAR FVA scores for the normal eyes and treated eyes were -0.03 ± 0.10 and 0.21 ± 0.12, respectively. A significant statistical difference was observed between the FVA scores (p < 0.001). The mean VMR was significantly higher for the contralateral normal eyes (0.94 ± 0.02) than for the treated eyes (0.89 ± 0.04; p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in the average response time.
Conclusions :
Although amblyopic eye was recognized as successfully treated by conventional visual acuity testing, FVA or VMR were worse in treated amblyopic eyes than in contralateral normal eyes. These results suggest that visual function is impaired in treated amblyopic eyes, regardless of treatment success.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.