Amblyopia is an eye disorder which involves poor visual ability of one eye, due to its limited communication with the brain. With amblyopic eyes, the brain does not send any optic signals to the affected eye and instead, merely send them to the stronger, unaffected eye. When the problem is left untreated, the brain keeps ignoring the lazy eye and eventually, this eye fully loses its ability to focus and thus, perceive objects.

Lazy eye recovery

     Lazy eyes are known as visual problems from birth and hence, children are mostly more susceptible to this disorder compared to adults. Unfortunately, untreated lazy eye may lead to worsening symptoms, which can be persistent. Adults often acquire amblyopic eye as a residual childhood amblyopia. The problem is, lazy eye recovery is advised to be done as early as possible and hence, have an amblyopic eye treated as a child will give more benefits than having it as older teenagers or adults. The majority of amblyopia cases get worse and thus, may require more complicated treatments before it gets fully recovered.

Amblyopia will never go away by itself. Proper treatments are required in order to maintain the affected eye ability on perceiving objects clearly and properly. The eye affected by amblyopia may likely to be better more quickly if the treatment is performed soon after the children are diagnosed with either refractive, deprivation, or strabismic amblyopia.

How long does it take for a lazy eye to go away?

     The main idea is that the sooner the treatments are performed, the more quickly a lazy eye will go away. However, how quickly? Or how long do we need before these treatments really show some improvement to the treated lazy eye? To begin with, age indeed have a significant role to the period of time needed by lazy eye treatments to make before the problem is improved. Some researches state that there are some possibilities related to the relationship of the patient age and lazy eye treatments.

⦁ As soon as infants are able to perceive objects, their risk of developing amblyopic eyes can be observed through close reviews and examination. The required treatments—if the children are diagnosed for lazy eye problem—should be performed right away, following this diagnose. Children that receive immediate treatments before their visual system is fully developed have a chance of having the problem improved soon.

⦁ One of some effective treatments for amblyopia is eye patching. This is a method to encourage the weaker eye to work properly by covering the stronger eye with an eye patch. If this eye patching treatment is done to amblyopic children before they reach the age of 6, improvement in visual ability can be shown within weeks after the treatment began. In replacement of eye patching—as the children might dislike or be distracted by it—vision-blurring eye drops can be used for making the stronger eye’s vision blur and thus, force the patients to employ their stronger one. Similar to eye patching method, this blurring eye drops method is going to require weeks to months of therapies before vision improvement is gained.

Does surgeries provide direct improvement to an amblyopic eye?

     There are various studies about how surgeries help improve an amblyopic eye. Many people, thus, think that surgeries are those instant treatments for amblyopia, which can give direct improvements to the patient’s visual impairment. As a matter of fact, surgeries are not a direct treatment aimed to directly improve the amblyopic eye. Rather, it is a treatment that is used to correct misaligned eyes that may be the main cause of amblyopic eyes. When these misaligned eyes are successfully corrected through surgery, the patient’s visual ability can be improved. However, this does not necessarily make the problem go away. In many patients, misaligned eyes that have been corrected through surgery may still require eye glasses, as they can only reach the ability glasses prescription can help. After the surgery, patients may experience minor discomfort for a couple of days, but will experience improvement in their misaligned eyes soon, although they may still require proper glasses prescription that helps with the visual ability.