What is vision therapy and how can it help?
An eye that turns in or out, tracking problems that cause “jumpy” vision when reading, eyes that don’t work together close up (convergence insufficiency), and other focusing or visual processing disorders can negatively impact learning, performance, and day-to-day activities. That’s where Vision Therapy comes in.
When does a child need vision therapy?
Children who need Vision Therapy are usually identified between the ages of 8 and 12, when reading difficulties and poor school performance become more noticeable.
Can vision therapy help children with convergence insufficiency?
Results from a clinical trial funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI) show that while vision therapy can successfully treat convergence insufficiency (CI) in children, it fails to improve their reading test scores.
Can vision therapy help children with tracking problems?
However, vision therapy can be used to improve tracking for children and adults who do have a legitimate problem following an object or text on a page. For example, a child might have trouble fixing their eyes on an object, following the object, or switching between objects while tracking.
Does vision therapy improve reading?
Results from a clinical trial funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI) show that while vision therapy can successfully treat convergence insufficiency (CI) in children, it fails to improve their reading test scores.
What are the benefits of vision therapy?
Vision therapy helps individuals develop normal coordination and teamwork of the two eyes, as well as, accuracy and efficiency of the focusing system. When the two eyes fail to work together as an effective team, performance in many areas can suffer (reading, sports, depth perception, eye contact, etc.).
Can vision therapy help with dyslexia?
Vision therapy aimed at the improvement of the child's visual efficiency and processing, is a highly effective treatment for dyslexia. Vision therapy may involve the use of lenses or prisms to help train visual skills.
What is the success rate of vision therapy?
Recently a National Eye Institute (NEI) funded study using multi-center, randomized, double-blind clinical trials showed that for a condition called convergence insufficiency (eye teaming difficulty) office-based vision therapy was successful in 75% of patients, and resulting in normal or significantly improved ...
How long does it take for vision therapy to work?
How Long Does It Take to See Results with Vision Therapy? It's important to note that the goal of vision therapy is to improve functionality, not complete recovery. For certain adults, gains can be experienced fairly soon. For others, it may take up to 6 months or more to realize significant results.
What age is vision therapy for?
Vision therapy is an effective treatment for these types of visual issues, which can take place at developing ages or even as an adult. Our practice prides itself in offering vision therapy solutions for any age, and we're ready to accommodate this treatment to your specific visual needs.
What are the symptoms of visual dyslexia?
Visual difficultiesheadaches and eyestrain associated with reading and/or other near work.text appearing blurred or going in and out of focus.text appearing double or alternating between single and double.difficulty keeping place in text.difficulty tracking across lines of text.More items...
Can an optician tell if you are dyslexic?
Optometrists cannot diagnose dyslexia but we can provide help with poor binocular control and visual stress experienced by some patients with dyslexia and other learning difficulties.
What are the four types of dyslexia?
Dyslexia can be developmental (genetic) or acquired (resulting from a traumatic brain injury or disease), and there are several types of Dyslexia including phonological dyslexia, rapid naming dyslexia, double deficit dyslexia, surface dyslexia, and visual dyslexia.
How often should you do vision therapy?
The average vision therapy program for eye teaming, tracking, and focusing disorders involves one or two 45 minute office visits per week along with 15 minutes of supportive home therapy 3 to 4 times per week. Most of these problems can be eliminated in 14 to 24 office visits.
How do I know if my child needs vision therapy?
20 signs your child needs vision therapyHeadaches.Blurred vision.Double vision.Eye strain or fatigue.Difficulty copying text.Sensitivity to bright light.Losing place while reading.Poor eye-hand coordination.More items...•
Is vision therapy permanent?
The program could take as little as a few weeks, but most often is conducted over several months. The acquired talents that you gain from vision therapy are yours to keep and are usually permanent once you've completed your program of active therapy.
What conditions does vision therapy treat?
Vision Therapy is an individualized treatment program designed to improve and sometimes eliminate conditions such as lazy eye (amblyopia), crossed eyes (strabismus), focusing insufficiency and excess, ocular muscle dysfunction, and learning-related vision disorders.
Can adults benefit from vision therapy?
Yes! Vision therapy has been shown to greatly improve the visual skills of the lazy eye by re-training the visual system. Recent studies have shown that the neural pathways of the brain can be enhanced at any age—this means that a lazy eye can actually be treated at any age, even into adulthood.
What are vision therapy exercises?
One of the most common exercises optometrists recommends includes the 20/20/20 rule. Every 20 minutes, spend 20 seconds looking at something about 20 feet (6 metres) away. This exercise is commonly recommended to help manage symptoms of digital eye strain.
Is vision therapy effective for adults?
Conclusions: Vision therapy is effective in eliminating asthenopia and improving convergence function in adult patients. In-office therapy combined with home therapy tends to produce better results than does home therapy alone.
Why Does Vision Therapy Remain a Secret to Many Parents?
Nearly every parent who has a child struggling to learn to read will have taken that child to an optometrist for a routine vision evaluation. In most cases they will have been told that their child’s vision is “just fine” after any acuity problems have been corrected.
What to do if your child is struggling with reading?
If his answer is yes, tell him that your child is struggling with reading and ask him who he refers to in your area, thank him, and try to assure him that you will continue to bring your child in for his regular eye care.
Why does reading fall apart?
Some children do fine for a while then gradually their performance starts to fall apart because they simply can’t sustain the effort. Reading absolutely requires the ability to not only exercise several vision competencies up close, but also to sustain those abilities for long periods of time.
What to do if your family physician detects something requiring surgery?
If your family physician detects something requiring surgery during your physical, he’ll readily refer you to a surgeon, knowing that you will return to him after the surgery and that you will probably be grateful to him that the problem was caught and handled.
Can an optometrist do a developmental eye exam?
Your family eye doctor generally doesn 't conduct the same testing as a developmental optometrist does. An eye exam by your family optometrist is unlikely to be as extensive as one done by a developmental optometrist looking for poor visual skills and is therefore less likely to result in a referral to a vision therapy center.
Can an optometrist diagnose vision problems?
By contrast, if your family optometrist decides to set up his practice to diagnose the sort of vision problems diagnosed routinely by developmental optometrists, he would find himself with two choices, both of them possibly unappealing. If he diagnoses a problem, he either has to set up his practice to deal with that problem which is a huge business decision involving significant investments of time and money, or else he has to refer his patient to a vision therapy center. However, nearly all vision therapy centers are run by developmental optometrists that potentially compete with your family optometrist for patients.
Can a child's vision be evaluated?
I recommend that before you assume that poorly developed visual skills are not the cause of your child’s reading struggles, you need to ask your family optometrist if he ever refers to a developmental optometrist who runs a vision therapy center. If the answer is no, or is evasive, or is disparaging of vision therapy, you can safely assume that your child’s vision still needs further evaluation. If his answer is yes, tell him that your child is struggling with reading and ask him who he refers to in your area, thank him, and try to assure him that you will continue to bring your child in for his regular eye care.
How long does in-office vision therapy last?
About two-thirds (206) received in-office vision therapy for 16 weeks, and the remainder (104) received in-office placebo therapy for 16 weeks. The in-office vision therapy was designed to improve accommodation (focusing) and vergence (eye teaming, meaning the ability of the eyes to work together), while the placebo therapy procedures were designed to have no effect on CI.
How long does it take for a child to improve reading comprehension?
While all children showed improved reading comprehension on the WIAT after 16 weeks, there was statistically no difference between average reading improvement for the CI treatment group (3.68 points) and placebo group (3.80 points). Nor was in-office vision therapy better than the placebo therapy on other standardized reading tests. Meanwhile, 75-80% of children in the vision therapy group had shown significant improvement and fell into the normal range for clinical signs, compared with approximately 30% in the placebo group. These results are similar to the original CITT study. However, the latest findings show no significant difference in symptoms, with 62% of children in the vision therapy group versus 58% of children in the placebo therapy group reporting significant symptom improvement. These findings suggest that clinical measures, rather than self-reported symptoms, are critical for assessing CI severity and improvement in children.
What is accommodation in the eye?
Accommodation is the eyes’ ability to focus. Tiny muscles inside your eyes contract or relax to change the shape of your eyes’ lenses and allow you to bring objects at different distances into focus.
Does 20/20 vision test affect functional vision?
A traditional vision exam primarily measures visual acuity, or 20/20 eyesight, unusually it does not assess functional vision, so a child with ’20/20 sight’ could still have a visual problem.
Can vision therapy help?
Vision therapy is a fully personalized treatment program designed to improve and strengthen visual skills, and retrain a child’s visual system to interpret visual input with increased accuracy and ease.
