What can I do about my lazy eye?

Can my lazy eye be corrected? 

There are actually two related situations that non-eye doctors refer to as “lazy eye:” strabismus and amblyopia. The former can be “cross-eyed” or more rarely “wall-eyed,” depending on whether the misaligned eyes looks inward or outward. This can often be greatly reduced with eye muscle surgery at any age, but rarely to a permanent degree that would make a person’s gaze 100% normal. Strabismus can cause amblyopia.

Amblyopia is where an eye cannot see (or be corrected with lenses to see) the normal 20/20 level of visual acuity. [This is the case despite there being no anatomically visible signs of ocular abnormalities (e.g. cataract).]

This is a fairly simple explanation of amblyopia: think of your eye’s visual information as data flowing through an internet connection to the brain to be processed. If a child has one eye that does not focus well compared to the other, the body’s “energy” expended in growth and development is wasted by installing a full “wide band” connection along that nerve pathway -a narrow, “less costly” bandwidth connection will do just fine since there isn’t as much detailed information to transmit to the brain.

This becomes a permanent situation once full growth is achieved, just like your height or hat size. If the situation is discovered early enough (childhood) it can usually be improved dramatically by patching the “good” eye in order to stimulate the formation of more detail-supplying nerve connections between the eye and brain. [As you can imagine, kids hate this exercise!]

Remember that “lazy eye” is no insult to your eye’s work ethic!