Dr. Lee and our head vision therapist, Britt, were away this weekend for a VT/Visual Dysfunctions course! We’re always learning and looking for new techniques to help our patients improve their visual skills. This time, we had the wonderful opportunity to learn from Dr. Steen Aalberg from Denmark. We’re excited to bring back new activities for the vision therapy program!
Vision problems after a concussion or traumatic brain injury can be devastating for a patient trying to return to school/work. Research has shown that approximately 70% of young athletes who suffer a concussion have eye coordination, focusing, and eye movement problems.
“The traditional vision approach still relies on the spontaneous recovery of double vision, patching, and using therapies to learn functional approaches around vision deficits, as opposed to treating the vision deficits. However, many optometrists across our nation are providing optometric vision therapy in addition to therapeutic lenses and prisms to help resolve visual deficits.”
Read More: Parents Speak Out About the Visual Link In Concussion Recovery
There is a non-surgical way to treat strabismus! Strabismus is a misaligned eye, sometimes called “lazy eye”. Vision therapy helps teach the eyes to work together, and many patients get dramatic results without surgery.
Even if you have already had surgery, vision therapy can help improve functionality and maintain alignment. Without good control and coordination in the brain, the eyes may end up turning again.
If you or someone you know has an eye turn, schedule a comprehensive eye exam with Dr. Lee to learn more about your options!
Follow this link for a recent article on the topic: Eye therapy offers non-invasive options for misaligned eyes
Here’s a great explanation of amblyopia (aka “lazy eye”), and how we treat it with binocular vision therapy, which can achieve better results than just patching alone! Even adults with amblyopia can develop the ability to better integrate messages from both eyes together.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with amblyopia, don’t miss this video!
by Dr. Dan Fortenbacher, Founder of Wow Vision Therapy in Michigan
July has been a busy month! Dr Lee was away for a bit to get caught up on the latest research for treating eye turns (strabismus) and lazy eye (amblyopia). Patching is old news – it helps turn the brain “on” to use the non-dominant eye, but it doesn’t teach the brain how to use both eyes together. New research shows that binocular training (vision therapy to train the use of both eyes together) can improve visual function beyond what was achieved with just patching alone! Developmental optometrists have been treating strabismus and amblyopia this way for a long time, but the results are just now becoming more well-known among neuroscientists as well. Very exciting progress! Improvements are possible even if you’ve tried patching in the past. Ask Dr. Lee for more information
