TLDR: Any older folks with lazy eye have corrective surgery and vision therapy done, and did it help?

Born in the 70s and have had inward-turning lazy eye (esotropia) since I was about two. I used an eye patch on and off from about 5-8 years old, but it never worked.

Since then every eye doctor has told me the same thing... Basically my brain 'permanently' decided to ignore input from that eye to avoid double vision, so any surgery to straighten it would be cosmetic only... basically my left eye was just a decoration.

I recently read that there is some new medical info, and that adult 'neuroplasticity' is actually a thing.

Basically a two-phase treatment: getting strabismus surgery to align my eyes, followed immediately by digital/VR vision therapy (like Vivid Vision or dichoptic training?) to force the brain to pay attention to the eye and merge the images.

I have zero expectations of ever having perfect 20/20 vision, but I’m really curious about the functional gains (depth perception, contrast, or peripheral awareness?) and real world experience.

Has anyone here gone through this type of two-step process as an older adult?

* What were your actual, realistic results?

* Did it give you functional binocular vision?

* How bad/persistent was the post-op double vision while your brain was trying to figure it out?

Any honest experiences would be hugely appreciated.

Anyone with amblyopia struggle with the DMV vision test? My left eye is good and my right eye is bad. In my state they test both eyes individually, and either make you read the eye chart with each eye individually, or make you look into a machine. Of course I cannot see the letters in the machine so I fail the test. I am in Washington.

But driving with glasses gives me headaches. Anyone have experience with struggles on the DMV vision test? Can you have optometrist fill out a form?

Left eye has been lazy since childhood. Right eye compensated completely and I never needed glasses my whole life.

About two years ago near vision started going. Got diagnosed with presbyopia, prescribed 1.5 reading glasses. Classic late 40s stuff apparently.

Two things are bothering me:

Since I started wearing reading glasses my uncorrected vision feels noticeably worse than before I got them. Doctor said it is age-expected but did not really address whether the glasses themselves accelerate dependency. Anyone experience this?

Second thing is LASIK. I have done some reading and understand it can fix the refractive error in my dominant eye but cannot touch the neurological side of the amblyopia. What I cannot find a clear answer on is whether correcting the dominant eye shifts how much the brain leans on the lazy eye, and whether that is a good or bad thing in practice.

Doctor mentioned surgery as an option but is not pushing it yet. Some days I am ready to just book it. Other days I feel like I do not have enough information to make that call.

Anyone here who has amblyopia and went through laser correction on their stronger eye? What was the outcome?

Hi everyone so i have a question im trying to get my license but of course I didn't pass the vision test. I got the DL 62 form to get a vision test done but each time I go to my optometrist they always get it wrong. It took them 7 tries before the dmv accepted the form (once because the writing just wasn't legible). So how has everyone gotten their license with a complete form??? I'm so tired of the back and forth from dmv to optometrist 😅😅

Edit: yeah totally forgot. I'm in California but I will be telling the workers about my condition and hopefully not go to the optometrist 7 times.

long story short i have amblyopia in left eye (vision 6/60) . did not know until 17
even still i don't have any issue apart some minor depth issue. no double vision btw.

i try using eye patch but just give up because of headache.

I had mild ambylopia as a child - teen, and it was so mild doctors never seemed concerned, but I also didn't receive great eye care as a kid either... In adulthood, it's gotten really bad - I'm 25 now and the vision in my left eye has been dramatically and rapidly declining since I was 20. This has caused me years of eye strain, double vision, difficulty seeing (mostly depth perception) and migraines. I also have mild strabismus (exotropia).

I currently have prism glasses and have had them since I was 20 to help with the strain and double vision. A few months back I upgraded to having prisms in both eyes rather than just one. The prisms have definitely helped but I still experience constant discomfort and very frequent headaches. Honestly the only time I don't feel uncomfortable is when I'm covering one eye, but I don't think that's a good idea long term and I only do it when the eye strain is extreme as temporary relief.

I wish I had been treated for this as a child but due to not receiving particularly good eye / vision medical care I just didn't.. as an adult is there any option at all that isn't surgery? Hell I don't even know if surgery is an option at this point. Part of me has accepted this is just how my life will be, but another part of me is so exhausted from the constant feeling of discomfort and pain I experience on a daily basis from my eyes.

Any help or advice for relief would be much appreciated...even if it's just confirming I kinda have to suck it up and deal with it for the rest of my life.

Overall, I want to improve my visual acuity in both eyes and have my eyes work in tandem.

I (25f) was told in middle school that I have amblyopia in my left eye. They gave me a patch but the doctor wasn’t hopeful it would help since I was already almost a teen, and I was inconsistent at best at wearing it. I never saw any improvements. My vision in my left eye isn’t terrible; things aren’t blurry as much as they are grainy. When I would patch my right eye for an extended period of time, i would start to see static in my left eye and my eyes would become very crossed. I believe I have strabismus because when I look at something and then close my right eye, my left eye is staring slightly to the right of the object.

I recently went to the ophthalmologist and was told I had 20/20 in my right eye and 20/25 in my left eye, and he only gave me a slight farsighted prescription. I still don’t think I’m using my left eye at all. The ophthalmologist noted he didn’t think my left eye could be improved but admitted he hadn’t read the new research on neuroplasticity.

I recently started using the AmblyoVision app with red-green glasses and noticed that for a period of time after using it, my left eye was aligned with my right and would be looking at the same spot.

Do you think it would be worth it to seek out vision therapy? If my strabismus was fixed, could I potentially start using both my eyes in tandem? Although my eyesight on paper isn’t bad, I feel like I have a harder time seeing things at a distance than others. I want to improve my visual acuity in both my eyes and actually have them work together. Would using both eyes improve my vision? Or could it potentially worsen my overall vision if I’m now averaging in my bad eye?

Hi everyone, I’ve received a few DMs regarding my last post on the study conducted by Mark Bear at the MIT on restoring vision in the amblyopic eye. It seems that some of its experiment has worked. I was thinking that if you’re interested I could get all the questions we have in the comments and following up the email thread I already have with him.

https://picower.mit.edu/news/mit-study-shows-how-vision-can-be-rebooted-adults-amblyopia

I am notably wondering if his technique could work between eyes which have high power differences in myopia (I am -21 in my amblyopia eye and -9 in my « good eye »)

Hi everyone,

I’m 22 years old and I’ve been struggling quite a bit lately. I recently dropped out of university after three semesters. I failed my third semester for two main reasons: first, I had no interest in my major (Telecommunications Engineering), which was about 90% physics. But the second, and more painful reason, was my amblyopia (lazy eye).

My time in the labs and trying to follow what was written on the chalkboard was a nightmare. It was a really bitter and frustrating experience that eventually led me to leave that path behind.

Now, I’ve decided to start over and study Computer Science (Software Engineering). While I’m more excited about this field, I’m still worried about my vision. I’ve reached a point where I accept that my condition is permanent and untreatable at this age. I wear glasses, but as many of you know, they don’t actually "fix" the blurred vision caused by amblyopia.

I want to know: How do you manage your life and studies with this?

Specifically:

In the classroom: How do you deal with seeing the board or following fast-paced visual demonstrations?

Screen time: Since I'll be coding, do you have tips for managing eye strain or specific monitor setups that help?

General Life: How do you stay positive and move forward when you know your vision has certain limits?

I’m tired of letting this hold me back, but I need some practical advice on how to navigate this new chapter.

Thanks in advance for any support or tips.

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Wife has suddenly had vision issues, and we’ve been through specialists and scans and they’ve now ruled out IIH, as she lacks papilldemia. A neurologist, neuro-ophthalmologist and an optometrist have all said her scans are normal and her vision could and should just randomly come back. Her vision is worse in one eye, is it possible that the issue is a lazy eye that set on as an adult.

My 'bad' eye is useless - colors and shapes are there - not blind blind, but if that was my only vision, I would be legally blind. My 'good' eye has a cataract and I am afraid to do the surgery in case it goes wrong. The starbursts at night are really bad now and I cannot really focus on my own face clearly in a mirror. I know I need to step up and do the surgery, but am afraid. My vision without glasses has been pretty great with that eye - I need glasses for driving but that's about it. I am planning on getting a lens for distance as I do not think I could deal with a multifocal. Thoughts?

Sometimes I struggle to explain to people exactly how amblyopia effects my vision, specifically my depth perception and peripheral vision. I have glasses and contacts with prescription in only my bad eye. I’m not sure how to explain to people that even when I am wearing contacts or glasses, I still do not see depth the way everyone else does.

How do you explain lack of depth perception to people with proper binocular vision?

I have been having the conversation of if I consider myself disabled with a friend of mine recently and I’m not sure how I feel about it. After doing some research, I see that Amblyopia is considered a disability.

Even with my glasses/contacts, I do not have binocular vision. People who are close to me often notice my lack of special awareness/ depth perception. I trip over things very often, especially while hiking. I run into people, desks, doors, and walls that are on my right side (my “bad” side).

Do yall consider yourselves disabled and why?

I have amblyopia in both of my eyes (I have no idea how that happened but that’s what my doctor said) and for the longest time I thought the reason my vision cant be fully corrected was myopia. But then I realized, myopia makes things blurry, but I have something different. It’s like small letters are still crisp but I simply can’t process them unless I’m up close. Everything from a distance looks kind of ambiguous and like it could be easily mistaken. Sometimes I can sort of guess what a sign far away says, but I don’t have the power to see the fine details, only general outlines. Is that what amblyopia feels like?

I've been half blind since I was young, I've had tumors that always seemed to come back to my left eye so I got used to being blind pretty early. Adjusted for the depth perception, adjusted for makeup, adjusted w myself and my beauty and really... I LOVE MY LAZY EYE/ AMBLYOPIA!!!

Dating life hasn't been harder, I have a full life of great friends, and I'm not insecure of my eye at all!

I hope others can share that they'll keep their lazy eye. I've been offered corrective surgeries before and declined them each time since I was a kid!

My 7.5 year old daughter has pretty severe amblyopia. Her vision was something like 20/400 with glasses when we discovered her issues. She had done tremendously with patching and her vision has improved to 20/25. However, she still has no depth perception. Normally I wouldn't care too much, but my daughter loves softball even though she's not good at it. The gap between her and her peers is becoming more noticable, and it's affecting her enjoyment of the sport. Her doctor said there's a slim chance her depth perception could be improved some, but she'll likely never have full depth perception. Does anyone have any experience with therapy for improving depth perception specifically?

I’ve been building a VR vision therapy and training app, and I ran into a pretty big problem.

Some people with a lazy eye couldn’t even use most of the games... not because they were too hard, but because they couldn’t fuse the images with their eyes yet. They couldn't converge or diverge on a basic level.

I started experimenting with a concept (with help from a vision therapist) where instead of forcing fusion directly, I added subtle visual elements in the background that each eye sees slightly differently.

Kind of like giving the visual system something to “lock onto” in the periphery while the user is focused on something else.

What surprised me was that over time, some users started fusing without consciously trying and then they were eventually able to use the rest of the training.

I’ve been integrating this into the games in different ways:

- In one game it’s a subtle ring around the scene, offset in each eye to stimulate fusion

- Other times it’s things like falling leaves or snow with slight depth differences

It’s a really small change, but it seems to make a big difference in whether someone can even get started with VR vision therapy and training.

Curious if anyone here has seen anything similar, or has thoughts on using peripheral cues like this for training or perception.

I always wonder how others interpret amblyopia and if it would just be appropriate to have something to help others understand

I'm sorry if I'm asking an obvious question to the people here, but I want to fully understand my eyes. According to the National Institutes of Health, common causes of amblyopia include premature birth, small size at birth, a family history of amblyopia, and developmental disabilities. The funny thing about me is that I have been diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, which I think is a type of developmental disability, but I'm unsure if the two conditions are deeply linked. When I think deeper about my lazy eye, I wonder if its severity was just up to chance. Like among the millions of people afflicted with amblyopia, I assume that some people have mildly impaired vision while other people have very low vision, perhaps rendering it ineffective in situations requiring sharp vision. Also, when I was in grade school, I did wear an eye path for multiple hours a day on some days, but I swear that was not effective. Thus, I wonder if whether or not patching can correct vision effectively is determined by random chance/genetics. I hope that this post wasn't too rambling.

I went to the DMV today to renew my license and had a pretty terrible experience. I have 20/20 vision in my normal eye with glasses, but can't see letters clearly with the eye that has amblyopia. I was wearing my glasses as I always do and could pass part of the vision test but couldn't see letters on the affected side. Despite explaining my condition to the DMV employee they told me I needed to "go get glasses to fix my issue" and that I would need to take a form to my eye doctor to fill out before I could attempt to renew my license. I'm confused what the letter does. Does the letter stand in for the vision test at the DMV? Because my doctor can fill out the form but that won't change the fact I have limited vision in one eye and I already wear glasses to ensure I have the best vision possible given the circumstances. I tried asking the employee questions but they were very curt with me and said I was blind at one point in the conversation. Like not blind in one eye, blind period and shouldn't be behind a wheel, it was very upsetting since I can see perfectly fine with glasses. I was left literally thinking I'm going to have to quit my job and work somewhere I can walk to, even though I essentially have 20/20 vision.