1. What does lazy eye mean?
Amblyopia and strabismus are intertwined and have very broad contents. Therefore, they should be examined together.
If the child has a favored congenital cataract or refractive error, the scene cannot be clearly transferred to the visual center of that eye in the child’s brain. The brain ignores the unclear image on the unaffected side and the visual center development of that eye is paused. Thus, lazy eye occurs. While one of the two eyes can see well, the other sees strength. Since the child can easily adapt to the environment with his healthy eyes, families may be too late to notice the unhealthy eye.
2. When should children have their first examination at the ophthalmologist? How can families understand lazy eye or take precautions?
Even if the baby is healthy, eye examination should be done by pediatricians after birth. If an abnormality is noticed by the doctor, the baby should definitely be examined by an ophthalmologist. If the parents or their families have problems such as lazy eye, strabismus, congenital cataracts, and advanced refractive errors, the baby should be examined by an ophthalmologist within the first few weeks after birth. There may also be an underlying and life-threatening eye tumor. Therefore, if a child has a crossed eye, they should be evaluated by an ophthalmologist immediately. In this way, the underlying cause of the eye shift can be understood and its treatment can be done without delay. Even if he is healthy, after the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th. Ophthalmologist examinations should be repeated at the age of
3. What is the importance of early diagnosis of lazy eye?
The earlier the treatment for lazy eye is started, the sooner the results are obtained. It is possible to get a response from the treatment until the age of 8-9, but then it becomes increasingly difficult to get results from the treatment. In fact, the development of vision begins at birth and is completed at the age of 8-9 years. Therefore, the most truthful thing is to be protected from laziness. The brain is a learning organ and vision is a learned function. Seeing is not just an enduring process. Early action is necessary for the healthy development of cells and pathways related to vision in the brain. If there is a refractive error that can cause laziness with early diagnosis, it will be sufficient to wear glasses only before laziness occurs. However, if it is delayed, there will be laziness. At that time, we will have to close the eye that sees enough with glasses treatment and strive lazily. This is essential for the development of vision, but often a tedious process for the baby or child.
4. What kind of treatment formula is followed in a child with congenital cataract?
If the child has a congenital cataract, this is not a black and white situation for us. There are also gray zones in the middle. A newborn baby with unilateral and advanced cataracts may require immediate surgery. In addition, we can recommend follow-up, glasses or occlusion treatment in a child with mild cataract, which we believe does not affect the vision that is not in the visual center.
5. How often do we encounter lazy eye in our society?
In 4% of children, we encounter lazy eye, which can cause permanent vision loss if left untreated.
6. What is strabismus?
Normally both eyes are parallel on all gaze sides. Strabismus is the disruption of this parallelism in one or more gaze directions. In normal vision development, while the eyes are looking directly at the point, the views from both eyes are superimposed by the brain and the sense of depth is created. With gliding, this visual development is interrupted. The level of advanced vision with a sense of depth is unattainable.
7. Can strabismus cause mental problems in the child?
Squint, that is, strabismus, is a valuable element in professional life and spiritually, not only in terms of aesthetics and visual function, but also because it can prevent eye contact. Humans maintain the connection by looking at each other’s faces and making eye contact in the middle of interests. 70% of contact is wasted with non-verbal messages. By making eye contact, we can understand what the other person is thinking by reading their facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions. If you can’t make direct eye contact, if you can’t understand what the person in front of you is feeling from the facial expression, then you have started the connection with 70% incomplete. These children may experience very important social bonding problems.
8. What kind of way should be followed in the treatment of strabismus?
In the treatment of strabismus, a total examination of the eyes and then glasses should be given if there is a refractive error, if there is a lazy eye, it should be dealt with, if there are other structural abnormalities of the eye (cataract, droopy eyelid, etc.) it should be removed.
9. Will we continue to wear glasses and closure treatments after strabismus surgery?
The child will likely continue to wear glasses after surgery. Here glasses help us. Glasses allow the child to get a clear image. We aim to send a better quality image to the gentleman by eliminating the refractive error in the eyes. Thus, we can struggle with both lazy eye and gliding.
Strabismus treatment is a whole. In addition to glasses, lazy eye and effort closure treatment is valuable. We do not make efforts to eliminate strabismus with laziness in seeing closure treatment. Our goal in closure treatment is to improve the quality of vision. Even if we make the eyes parallel by performing strabismus surgery, a quality view must come to him in order for the gentleman to grasp this and understand that he should keep it parallel. For these reasons, even if the eyes are paralleled after surgery or without surgery, eyeglasses and closure treatments in children should be continued under the control of an ophthalmologist until advanced ages.
10. Glasses numbers decrease over time or can the child get rid of glasses?
Our aim is not to reduce the number of glasses in time or to get rid of them. This is where families come into conflict and become frustrated. In fact, children’s reactions to using glasses are often absent. It’s the families that are complaining. When we say that your child needs to wear glasses, if they are touted to the child by saying, “Oh, we are going to wear glasses”, the child will have negative reflections on the glasses.
11. What kind of path should be followed in closure treatment and how long should it be continued?
Closure treatment is a long-term treatment that can take 8-9 years. The family has an important role to play. Because the family will apply this treatment at home. Depending on the age of the child, the appropriate eye is closed for a certain amount of time every day, and sufficient stimulus is given to the side of the eye with low vision. If this treatment is interrupted before the brain vision development is completed, there will be no improvement. Many times it is not possible to force the child to continue this treatment. This should be maintained with new procedures and games according to the age of the child. Closure therapy can be made fun by playing hacking in the preschool period. If the child gets bored, the game should be diversified and closed. Parents should accept this treatment and tell the child, “This is a module of our life to eat and play.
Preventing laziness is essential. For this reason, even if there are no complaints, babies should definitely undergo a complete eye examination and necessary precautions should be taken to prevent laziness.
In summary; In the treatment of lazy eye and strabismus, parents have a mission. They are prejudiced against using eyeglasses, the application of closure treatment is daunting and it takes years, it causes a lot of tolerance and interruption of the treatment because the child does not want the closure application. We can say that it is the basic medicine of amblyopia, that parents approach the treatment seriously and apply the offers of the ophthalmologists without interrupting them.
