A preliminary study on the treatment of amblyopia with Haidinger's brushes

• Main Authors: Churawan Lal Sahu, R Muralidhar, D Ramamurthy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2020-01-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology and Research
• Subjects: amblyopia; haidinger's brushes; patching
• Online Access: http://www.jcor.in/article.asp?issn=2320-3897;year=2020;volume=8;issue=1;spage=10;epage=13;aulast=Sahu

Introduction: A number of treatment options for amblyopia have been reported in the recent years. Haidinger's brushes have also been used to treat amblyopia and correct fixation abnormalities in amblyopia though there is no study that addresses visual acuity to the best of our knowledge. Type of Study: This is a nonrandomized prospective case series. Materials and Methods: Patients between the age groups of 5 and 15 years with strabismic/anisometropic/mixed/ametropic amblyopia were enrolled for the study. All patients wore their refractive correction for a month prior to the study. All patients were made to view the Haidinger's brushes through the amblyopic eye for 15 min/day for a total of 10 consecutive days. Part-time occlusion was commenced thereafter. The vision was recorded prior to the commencement of the exercise, after conclusion of the same and at 2-month review. Results: Thirty-seven eyes of 30 patients were enrolled for the study. The mean age of the patients was 8.7 ± 3.4 years. The mean number of lines of improvement was 1.2 ± 0.9 at completion of 10 days of exercise and 1.36 ± 0.9 at 2 months with patching. None of the patients had a loss of visual acuity at 2-month review. The series included patients with anisometropic, ametropic, and strabismic amblyopia though the numbers did not permit a subgroup comparison. Overall, eight eyes did not respond to exercises. Conclusions: 10 days of exercises with Haidinger brushes produces substantial visual gain in patients with strabismic, anisometropic and mixed amblyopia. The improvement is sustained at 2-month review. The results of this study need to be validated in a larger series of patients.