pupil dilation as a vision therapy tool?

[Guest guest]

I have recently heard of a child having one eye dilated with drops as

a way to sort of force the other eye to strengthen. I have never

read about this before on any of the boards. Is this a new type of

treatment? The father is an eye doctor and I think he is doing the

treatments. I think they are noticing some improvements with vision,

however, his behavior has also gone downhill. I wondered if the

solutions contain any thimerosal anymore. Anyhow, was just curious

to know if anyone out there is doing this/has heard of it.

W

[Guest guest]

My 6 year old daughter did this, about a year ago.

She has amblyopia (lazy eye), not the kind that you would notice a

wandering eye, just one of her eyes was not working, it was letting

the other eye do all the work.

The eye dr recommended drops because she needed long hours of

patching, and the eye doctor felt this would accomplish the task.

When her bad eye started getting more up to speed, we had to stop

the drops and move to patching, because at that point the eye dr

felt 1-2 hours a day was appropriate, not longer. If we were to drop

her eye, the effects would last much longer then 1-2 hours.

I never thought about the thimerasol - that was a year ago before I

knew much about mercury. Let me go look for the bottle.

Ah yes, here it is, we save everything. Homatropine Hydrobromide 5%.

Also contains boric acid, potassium chloride,sodium carbonate,

edetate disodium,purified water, preserved with benzalkonium

chloride. Made by OMJ Pharmaceuticals.

> I have recently heard of a child having one eye dilated with drops

as

> a way to sort of force the other eye to strengthen. I have never

> read about this before on any of the boards. Is this a new type

of

> treatment? The father is an eye doctor and I think he is doing

the

> treatments. I think they are noticing some improvements with

vision,

> however, his behavior has also gone downhill. I wondered if the

> solutions contain any thimerosal anymore. Anyhow, was just

curious

> to know if anyone out there is doing this/has heard of it.

> W

[Guest guest]

Did her behavior worsen at all while you were doing this? This child

had a really decent start of the year, and about a month and a half

ago started changing. Before, you could see what were the

antecedents to his outbursts/attack- you could see him getting

stressed. Now, you can't really see him getting stressed at all, he

just goes off. He also seems to need to " finish " what he started so

he'll really go for you and keep going until he's done biting or

whatever. There have been no changes in his classroom/therapy. Who

knows about diet though... I don't think the parents are doing

anything in the diet realm, meaning, I think he eats whatever they

can get him to eat, ice cream, etc. Anyhow, just curious to know if

you saw any bad behaviors that you could attribute to this eye

dilation therapy or not.

TIA,

W

> My 6 year old daughter did this, about a year ago.

> She has amblyopia (lazy eye), not the kind that you would notice a

> wandering eye, just one of her eyes was not working, it was letting

> the other eye do all the work.

> The eye dr recommended drops because

[Guest guest]

Sorry, this was my NT daughter, no worsened behavior except when it

came time to drop her eye, at which point she'd put up the biggest

fight.

> Did her behavior worsen at all while you were doing this? This

child

> had a really decent start of the year, and about a month and a

half