Full time occlusion VS part time occlusion in treatment of monocular amblyopia

Abstract

Objective: To compare improvement in Best Corrected Visual Acuity (BCVA) by Full Time Occlusion (FTO) or Part Time Occlusion (PTO) technique in children with monocular amblyopia. Methods: This randomized control trial was conducted at Combined Military Hospital, Gujranwala from April 2018 to June 2019. A total of 52 children, diagnosed with non-pathological ametropic amblyopia were randomly divided in two groups. Both underwent cycloplegic refraction and assessment of BCVA. Group A underwent FTO for eight weeks with patch removal only during sleep. Group B underwent PTO for eight weeks with patching done for six hours a day, out of which 1-2 hours were utilized in near work. Final BCVA was checked at eight weeks, and compared between two groups. Results: Mean age of study population was 11.06±3.30 years. Mean BCVA before amblyopia treatment was 0.70±0.20 logMAR, and mean BCVA after eight weeks of amblyopia treatment in both groups was 0.29±0.18 logMAR. Difference in BCVA between both groups was statistically significant (p= 0.023). Mean improvement in lines on Snellen’s Visual acuity chart was 1.92±1.35 lines. In our study, 92% of children in FTO group and 66.6% of children in PTO group achieved BCVA of 6/12 or better. Conclusions: Full time occlusion in children with monocular amblyopia results in greater improvement in BCVA as compared to part time occlusion of six hours per day. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.6.1287 How to cite this:Mehboob MA, Muhammad S, Farooq MA. Full time occlusion VS part time occlusion in treatment of monocular amblyopia. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(6):1647-1651. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.6.1287 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.