Amblyopia Research Paper

My inspiration for wanting to become an optometrist was jump-started by my aunt Rosemary. My aunt suffers from dry macular degeneration, and she first started losing her eyesight when I was about five years old. I have always been close to her, and I have seen her vision deteriorate. Today she can see peripherally. I have watched as she lost her driving privileges and was forced into an early retirement. I always viewed my aunt's condition without an appreciation of how lucky I truly was to have normal vision. However, In the summer of 2002 I visited an optometrist for the first time. Since that first visit to the optometrist 13 years ago, my eyesight has drastically deteriorated. I currently have a correction factor of -7.25 in my right eye, and a correction factor of -8.0 in my left eye. My vision has stabilized, but my high correction power, coupled with observing my aunt's macular degeneration, allowed me to understand that the gift of vision may not be an everlasting gift. I want to do my best to help people make the best of what may not be an enduring attribute of their lives.

Age-related macular degeneration also known as AMD is a disease leading to severe vision and legal blindness in the elderly population. I will address the health condition description and the disability and functional implications who suffer from this disease.

Seeing them get tested, try their first lenses, and helping them learn to properly care for both the lenses and their eyes at a young age is inspiring, and knowing that I am making a difference in these children's lives by the simple act of helping them see better continues to motivate me. This is especially true when these young patients are receiving Orthokeratology treatments. With these treatments I get to witness their vision improve over time, eventually being able to see perfectly with naked eyes This has taught me the importance of beginning vision care at an early age, making the study of youth vision care a particular interest of

Eyes: Pupillary light reflex: Pupils are equal, round, reactive to light. Accommodation is present. Eyebrows, eyelids, and lashes are present, symmetric, and eyelids are a proximal completely. Conjunctive is pink, clear, with no swelling or lesions. Sclera is china white. Patient wears glasses and the glasses are in good repair. The last vision test was last spring and the patient gets an eye exam done every two years. The client states her left eye did not fully develop so she has always had bad vision in that one eye. However, when you look at the eye, you would never notice. Cataracts were removed in both eyes, but it was 3 years apart.

As a result of retinal haemorrhages, children can suffer with permanent damage to their vision due to the inflicted injury to the eye or the brain. Scarring of the retina or atrophy of the optic nerve may show up months after the injury, and is frequently irreversible. This can result in the infant suffering with severe vision impairments and even blindness (Blumenthal, 2002).

Patients with age-related macular degeneration may not notice any symptoms at first. The first noticeable sign is a gradual, or sudden, change in the quality of vision depending on which type of AMD is occurring. Straight lines will start to appear distorted (Kozarsky, 2017). Early dry AMD is diagnosed by the presence of drusen. This gradually can cause a dramatic loss of the center of vision. In the intermediate stage of AMD, the beginnings of vision loss are apparent, but there still may not be any other noticeable symptoms. At this time, optometrists will test for larger drusen and pigment changes in the retina (“Research into the Genetics of Macular Degeneration,” 2017). Other symptoms of age-related macular degeneration might include an

In the United States of America on its own has had 140,893 cases reported in May, June, July, and August in the year 2014. Twelve percent of the 140,893 cases had surgery to remove an eye. Forty percent of the surgery amount they ended up going blind or losing their sight. This

The most common cause for Amblyopia is the misalignment of the eye. When both of your eyes do not align in the same direction the brain turns off the vision to the misaligned eye, and then your brain only uses the eye that is aligned. If this continues the eye will not connect to the visual cortex properly and Amblyopia will occur.

However, amblyopia is increasingly becoming recognised as a binocular disorder. This emerging theory has driven the development of binocular treatments, some of which have yielded positive results surpassing those achieved by traditional methods; (Kelly, Jost and Dao 2016; Jost, Kelly, Leffler, Beauchamp, Birch, 2016; Birch et al, 2015; Li et al 2014). Importantly, findings demonstrate the potential plasticity of the adult brain beyond the hypothesised critical period for visual development, Tailor et al., (2016), Nancy (2015). Critically, binocular treatments are producing encouraging improvements among adult amblyopes Vedamurthy, Nahum, Bavelier and Levi (2015), Li et al., (2013), posing important implications for clinical practice. The aim of this essay is to explain amblyopia with reference to ‘strabismus and anisometropia’. To discuss traditional methods and newly developed binocular treatments that aim to address the binocular dysfunction of the amblyopic brain. Amblyopia occurs during the first 3 years of life Levi et al (2015) and doesn’t develop beyond the age of 8yrs supporting the ‘critical period’ of susceptibility. However, this doesn’t evident a theory for a null treatment effect among amblyopes beyond this period.

According to Baily and Hall, while visual impairment early in life is associated with inherited congenital disorders, abnormal fetal devepment, and problems associated with premature birth, most eye conditions are associated with aging. They claim that over 70% of the visually impaired population in the United States is over 65. Age related maculopathy, also called macular degeneration, or AMD, impairs the center of vision in older individuals. The macula is the region in the back of the retina that surrounds and includes the fovea (Goldstein 1999). It is important to understand that when this degeneration progresses enough, the condition constitutes blindness because the foveal area is what is

The paper begins introducing the many ways to treat exotropia, ranging from minus lens therapy to VT to surgery. However, the

Many people may know strabismus as crossed-eye, it is more commonly described as a disorder in which the eyes don’t look in the same direction at the same time. Strabismus is caused by defective nerves or muscles, or because of trauma. Looking at the muscle specifically, it affects the four rectus muscles which move the eyes up, down, to the right, and to the left, and two oblique muscles, helping the eyes look down and in or up and in. This disease affects the action of the eye muscles in doing their job properly, keeping it from controlling and

Everyone's eyes are different. Eye problems can occur from birth or develop as the person ages. Strabismus is an eye muscle problem in which the eyes are not aligned properly and point in different directions. There are three different types of strabismus. The types are: esotropia, exotropia and hypertropia. I have personally had strabismus. Last year, I had strabismus surgery to correct my “wandering eye”. Today, I will discuss strabismus, what causes it, and how it can be treated.

There are several different techniques for diagnosing AMD and various signs that sufferers of the condition present to help with the diagnosis process by clinicians. Some of these signs may include sudden or progressive decreased vision which cannot be improved with optic correction, a central filed defect, metamorphopsia or difficulty in simple activities including watching television and recognising people. (14) Metamorphopsia is a type of vision distortion where upon viewing a grid of straight lines, a sufferer would see the lines as wavy and some parts of the grid as blank, therefore a suitable technique for identifying metamorphopsia is the Amsler grid. (25) Another similar but slightly more advanced technique for

As defined by the American Academy of Ophthalmology (2) strabismus is a visual defect in which the eyes are misaligned and point in different directions. One eye may look straight ahead, whil e the other eye turns inward, outward, upward, or downward. You may always notice the misalignment, or it may come and go. A second disorder, amblyopia, commonly goes along with strabismus. Again, from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Amblyopia is p oor vision in an eye that did not develop normal sight during early childhood. It is sometimes called lazy eye. (7) The reason these two conditions are so closely linked relates to how the brain interprets the information received from th e two separate eyes.