Anisometropia and isoametropia associated with microstrabismus: effectiveness of late anti-amblyopia treatment

Outcomes Research Study on patients suffering from anisometropia or isoametropia associated with amblyopia and microstrabismus to show the impact of late occlusion treatment on therapeutic prognosis.

Enrollment of all the eligible patients presenting to recruiting centers at the Department of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus - Ophthalmological Clinic - Policlinico Umberto I - Rome. At baseline, all patients will undergo an opthalmologic evaluation. Recruited patients will be followed for a 2-year period. Our test group was composed of 31 patients, 11 with bilateral and 20 with monolateral amblyopia, totalling 42 amblyopic eyes, and it was assessed - always by the same examiner - with the help of the following orthoptic examinations: Wirt test, Irvine-Jampolsky test (4 dioptre fixation task), Visuscope, Cover Test, Bagolini striated glasses, and Worth lights test. We assessed pre-post treatment variations observed in the overall group of amblyopic eyes, regardless of the differences between RE and LE.

Of the 31 children, 58.1% were males and 41.9% female, average age between 6 and 14 years. Of the 42 amblyopic eyes, after daily occlusion of 8 hours ± 2.30 SD, we recorded an improvement of 71.4%, and visual acuity increased from an average of 0.4 LogMAR to 0.1 LogMAR.

Late anti-amblyopic occlusion treatment proved effective in the long term for children 6 to 12 years, specifically regarding visual acuity, fixation, stereopsis, and binocular collaboration in patients suffering from anisometropia or isoametropia and microstrabismus.