What is a lazy eye and how is it treated?
The term “lazy eye” is a misnomer for poor vision in one eye, though the eye appears to be normal. If a condition causes a child to favor one eye, poor vision might occur in the eye that is not being used. The medical term for this condition is amblyopia. Amblyopia can result from crossed eyes (strabismus). The brain turns off the image coming from the deviated eye to avoid double vision, since this image cannot be superimposed on the image coming from the other eye. Over time, the part of the brain receiving the image from the deviated eye loses the capacity to see small targets and vision is reduced in that eye. This condition is called strabismic amblyopia. Amblyopia can also result from uncorrected high errors of refraction, such as astigmatism (an irregularity in the curvature of the cornea), or from unequal errors of refraction between the two eyes (anisometropia). The child’s brain will favor the clearer image coming from the eye with the lesser error of refraction, thus leading
