The effects of amblyopia on children's reading performance after patching treatment

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of amblyopia on children's reading performance after the successful patching treatment with 20/20 visual acuity (VA) in the treated eye.

The treated amblyopes group included 10 children with strabismic amblyopia diagnosed on the first visit presenting VA equal or better than 0.0 logMAR (20/20 Snellen) in the better vision eye and VA worse than 0.2 logMAR (20/32 Snellen) in the worse eye that underwent patching treatment of amblyopia reaching a final VA  equal to  0.0 logMAR in the treated eye. The control group comprised 10 children matched by age, gender and school-grade with no visual disorders. Reading performance was evaluated according to reading acuity (RA), critical print size (CPS), reading speed (RS) at 0.7 logMAR, and maximum reading speed (MRS) using the MNREAD chart.

Binocular reading performance was compared between groups and no statistically significant differences were found on RA, CPS, RS, or MRS (p > 0.05). When analyzing monocular reading performances of treated amblyopes, a worse RA (p = 0.04) and CPS (p = 0.04) were observed on the previously amblyopic eye when compared to the fellow eye. When comparing the fellow eye from treated amblyopes and a randomly selected eye from controls, no statistically significant differences on RA, CPS, RS, or MRS were found (p > 0.05).

The results suggest that even patients who reached 20/20 VA in the treated eye after patching treatment for amblyopia may present persistent impaired reading performance. These findings reinforce the importance of reading performance testing as a tool when evaluating the visual function development in amblyopic patients.