Patching with video gaming versus patching with mobile phone use in treatment of adult amblyopia: an experimental study

Abstract

Background: Adults with amblyopia are currently offered no treatment in clinical practice Recently, it has been demonstrated that patching one eye of a binocularly normal subject with a diffuser strengthens that eye's contribution to the binocular percept when the diffuser is removed. So, this study assesses effectiveness and difference of occlusion therapy while using mobile phones and while playing video games in adult patients with amblyopia.

Methods: Subjects with refractive, anisometropic, sensory and strabismic amblyopia in 18 to 40 age year old included in the study. It’s a 6 months’ observational study with 2 follow-up after first visit. 66 patients were observed. The first group (n=29) give occlusion therapy while using mobile phone and second group (n=37) done occlusion therapy while playing video games. Student t-test is used to analyse vision and contrast sensitivity and analysed using statistical software SPSS (version 20.0).

Results: Out of 29 patients in first group, 18 (62%) were females, and 11 (38%) were males. Out of 37 patients in second group, 20 (54.1%) were females, and 17 (45.9%) were males. First group (patching with reading in mobile phone) had more improvement than second group (patching with video gaming) in vision and contrast.

Conclusion: Males are more adult amblyopes comparing to females (in both the groups). In case of comparing the improvement of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. Better improvement is obtained more in contrast sensitivity during follow-up.