For Children Born With Lazy Eye iPad Game Could Be A Life-Changer

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- There was good news Thursday, for parents and kids born with lazy eye -- which doctors call amblyopia. It's much easier than the usual eye patch, it's an iPad game.

As CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez explained, treating lazy eye is no game, it could prevent blindness.

Amblyopia leads to vision problems because the brain of a young child learns to ignore blurry images coming from the lazy eye.

Treatments force the brain to pay attention to the weak eye with special glasses or patching the good eye.

There's also a treatment that makes it fun for kids.

Amblyopia is one of the most common causes of visual impairment in children, affecting 3 to 5 percent of kids in the United States.

"Amblyopia not only has deficits in vision, but it causes deficits in 3D depth perception, reading and fine motor skills," Krista Kelly, Ph-D, Retina Foundation of the Southwest said.

Researchers studied 28 children ages 4 to 10 who had amblyopia. In a randomized trial, children were assigned to one of two groups, one that used an iPad game for treatment and the other who used conventional patching. After two weeks the group that patched also took home the game.

The children put on a pair of special glasses and high contrast images are sent to the stronger eye and low contrast images are sent to the weaker eye. The child, thus has to work the weaker eye in order to play the game, as well as work both eyes together.

The study appeared in JAMA Opthalmology.

"We found that at the two week visit, children who had the iPad game improved much more than children who patched. Both groups improved about two lines of vision on the letter chart and about 40 percent of the children recovered normal vision," Kelly said.

Dr. Kelly said the new game is a promising addition to existing treatments for lazy eye. She hopes more games TV shows, and movies can be used as treatment in the future.

"So we want to be able to treat amblyopia early in life to be able to circumvent these deficits and hopefully allow the child to be able to develop and thrive academically and socially," Kelly said.

Most kids aren't crazy about having to wear an eye patch or glasses that have one lens all blurry.

A treatment that doesn't make them look different, works just as well, and is also fun is a win-win.

Further studies are being done to see if the long term results with the games are as good as patching.