If left untreated, the maturing brain eventually may ignore signals from the weaker eye, causing permanent vision loss. In fact, amblyopia is the most common cause of monocular (single eye) vision problems in young to middle-age adults.

Many case reports demonstrate that vision therapy works for treating amblyopia in adults and children. While amblyopia treatment has a decreased effect for adults compared with children, documented case reports show improvement of vision and binocular function after treating adult amblyopes with vision therapy.

(Harrad et al., 1996) Because amblyopia typically affects visual acuity in one eye, amblyopia is often considered to be a monocular disease.

But many children also need an eye patch or eye drops to effectively treat the lazy eye. If the child’s vision doesn’t clearly improve in the lazy eye within twelve weeks despite wearing glasses, an eye patch or eye drops are used. This treatment typically takes a few months, during which regular eye tests aredone.

For most children with lazy eye, proper treatment improves vision within weeks to months. Treatment might last from six months to two years. It’s important for your child to be monitored for recurrence of lazy eye — which can happen in up to 25 percent of children with the condition.

Does Amblyopia Get Worse With Age? Even though the visual impairments from amblyopia begin in childhood, they can continue into adulthood with worsening symptoms if left untreated. Still, children with untreated amblyopia may have permanent vision loss before they even reach adulthood.

There, they become interpreted as the things you see. If you have one eye that’s weaker than the other, your brain may start to favor the stronger eye and stop receiving signals from the weaker eye. Without treatment, lazy eye can get worse over time. But the condition is treatable.

Binocular treatment options: MFBF Binocular treatment involves engaging the poorer-seeing eye while the better-seeing eye is open. We call this treatment “monocular fixation in a binocular field (MFBF).”10 This is done by placing a colored filter over the better-seeing eye so that the visual target disappears.

Treatment of refractive amblyopia can include vision therapy, eye patching, eye drops, refractive surgery, or a combination of those options. Vision therapy may include the use of virtual reality technology in treatment of lazy eye.

Monocular diplopia happens in one eye even if you cover the other eye. You can typically correct it using a pinhole. But binocular diplopia usually happens when both eyes are open, and you can typically correct it by covering either eye.

Making the “lazy eye” see more clearly by patching alone does not automatically mean that the other visual information will be processed the same with each eye. It also does not do anything to help the brain learn to combine the information from the two eyes effectively.

Amblyopia is the medical term for “lazy eye.” We define amblyopia (lazy eye) as the lack of development of clear vision in one or both eyes. It occurs for reasons other than an eye health problem that cannot be improved with glasses alone.

Traditional treatment typically involves prescribing glasses and then patching the stronger eye with an eye patch or using eye drops to blur the better-seeing eye while doing daily activities.