High-Adherence Dichoptic Treatment Versus Patching in Anisometropic and Small Angle Strabismus Amblyopia: A...

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Pediatric Medicine
• Vision Science

Background:

• Amblyopia, or "lazy eye," affects visual development in children.
• Traditional amblyopia treatment often involves patching the stronger eye.
• Novel therapeutic approaches are needed to improve treatment efficacy and adherence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the effectiveness and safety of CureSight, a binocular eye-tracking-based home treatment, against patching for amblyopia.
• To evaluate visual acuity improvements in children undergoing novel dichoptic therapy versus standard patching.

Main Methods:

• A prospective, masked, multicenter randomized controlled trial involving 149 children aged 4 to <9 years with amblyopia.
• Participants were randomized to either binocular dichoptic treatment (CureSight) for 120 hours over 16 weeks or patching for 224 hours.
• Primary outcome measured was the mean improvement in amblyopic eye visual acuity (logMAR) at 16 weeks.

Main Results:

• The binocular treatment group demonstrated non-inferior visual acuity improvement compared to patching in the modified intent-to-treat (mITT) analysis (0.034 logMAR).
• In the per-protocol (PP) dataset, binocular treatment showed superior visual acuity improvement over patching (0.05 logMAR).
• Adherence was significantly higher in the binocular treatment group (94.0%) versus the patching group (83.9%).

Conclusions:

• Binocular eye-tracking-based home treatment (CureSight) is a viable alternative to patching for amblyopia.
• This novel therapy is non-inferior and potentially more effective than patching, yielding better visual outcomes.
• CureSight offers improved adherence and efficacy for treating anisometropic, strabismic, and mixed-mechanism amblyopia in children.