Amblyopia: contemporary clinical issues

Research into the clinical management of amblyopia has, most recently, focussed on the effectiveness of amblyopia treatment. Given the mounting evidence that the condition is treatable, an important priority is the detection of individuals with the condition. Here, we review critically the means by which this can be achieved. We conclude that intensive early screening can produce improved outcomes but that the effectiveness of real-life screening programmes is very dependent on the coverage they obtain. An almost entirely neglected subfield of amblyopia treatment research is the identification of reasons why parents and children often fail to comply with occlusion therapy. Here, we examine a psychological approach to this problem and find it to be informative in predicting compliance. Lastly, we consider the disability arising from strabismus, again from a psychological perspective, and find that on a range of psychosocial well-being indicators, strabismus surgery results in significant gains.