Worried parents look away.
Research published in Advances in Rehabilitation Science and Practice suggests that video games might actually help improve the vision of some children.
It found that patients with amblyopia had a statistically significant improvement in their visual acuity after binocular rehabilitation through digital video games. The researchers believe more study involving more subjects are needed to confirm the finding.
In amblyopia, also referred to as “lazy eye,” the brain has a breakdown in communication with one of the eyes, undermining vision from that eye.
This study, by Italian researchers Mr Giambattista Bari, Ms Anna D’Ambrosio, and Mr Antonio Laborante, looked at the efficacy of rehabilitation using smartphone and tablet games combined with anaglyphic glasses in children living with amblyopia.
It involved 55 children aged between 4 and 12 years old, between May 2017 and April 2019. Participants were eligible if they had logMAR inerocular difference of 0.2 or more or a best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) of 0.2 LogMAR or worse. Prematurity of 8 or more weeks, coexisting ocular or systemic diseases, or developmental delay led to exclusion.
They played Tetris, Letter Hunt, and Snake for 7 hours per week for 8 weeks, with exams given at 4 and 8 weeks from baseline. All parents self-reported compliance to the training.
The amblyopic eyes improved from their mean baseline BCVA of 0.28 (0.13) logMAR to 0.14 (0.09) logMAR after 4 weeks and 0.10 (0.09) logMAR after 8 weeks. The fellow eye also had modest improvement in logMAR, improving from 0.08 (0.1) at baseline to 0.02 (0.04) after 8 weeks.
The children were also put into two groups, one comprising children who patched at the same time as therapy and one without patching,
Children without patches had a mean BCVA of 0.28 (0.13) logMAR at baseline, which improved to 0.09 (0.10) logMAR after 8 weeks; children who patched improved from 0.28 (0.11) logMAR to 0.10 (0.06) logMAR after 8 weeks.
The researchers concluded that the preliminary data were promising but would need further research.
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