Does Four Hours Per Day of Occlusion Influence the Visual Function of the Non-Amblyopic Eye?

Patching is an important method for the treatment of amblyopia, but inappropriate patching will cause the impairment of the visual function. This study is to explore the impact of four hours per day of patching on the visual function of the patient’s sound eye-21 amblyopes (treated with spectacles and patching four hours per day, the patching group) and 6 amblyopes (treated with spectacles only, the control group) were enrolled in our study. Visual acuity of the amblyopic eye exhibited significant improvement after one month of four hours per day of patching. Increased contrast sensitivity of the non-amblyopic eye of the patching group was shown at the 6.0cpd after one month and 3 months (P = 0.004; P = 0.016) under photopic conditions, only after three months (P = 0.037) under scotopic conditions. But, compared to the control group, the contrast sensitivity of the non-amblyopic eye of the patching group only showed significant difference at the 6.0cpd after three months of treatment (P = 0.045). No matter whether it was one month or three months after patching, the non-amblyopic eye did not cause a statistical difference in visual acuity. The results above showed that four hours per day of patching does no harm to the visual function of the patient’s sound eye.