Amblyopia: Things You Need To Know about Lazy Eye

Amblyopia, commonly known as "Lazy Eye", is a
disorder characterised by poor vision in an
eye that is otherwise physically normal. it's
estimated that between 2 and 5 per cent of
children in the world have it.

It normally occurs during childhood, and many
people do not know they have it until they
are older while testing their eyes. This is
because the vision in their stronger eye is
normal. However, in serious cases the affected
person may experience other visual disorders,
such as poor depth perception (poor perception
of distance).

This is due to weak transmission of visual images
to the brain, occuring over a long period during
a person's early childhood. The poor transmission
may be due to an obstruction caused by congenital
cataracts, misalignment of eyes, causing a person
to squint, or anisometropia (different degrees of
shortsightedness, longsightedness and astigmatism
in both eyes causing objects to look blurry near
or far.

Torsten Wiesel and David Hubei, neuroscientists at
Harvard Medical School, won the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine in 1981 for their work in
revealing the irreversible damage to a part of
the brain, responsible for vision, caused during a
child's so-called "critical period" (from birth to
two years of age). Detecting the condition at
early childhood increases the chances of successful
operation.

Myopia, also called shortsightedness, is a condition
in which a person is able to see objects clearly
when they are near, but not when they are far.
The prevalence of myopia is very high in Asia, up
to 90 percent in some countries.