Vision Therapy-Based Program for Myopia Control in Adolescents

Vision therapy and rehabilitation have been used to successfully treat a wide range of visual disorders for over 90 years. Eye exercises are considered as one of the vision therapy-based program. Myopia as a refractive defect of the eye could be controlled through the use of vision therapy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of specifically designed eye exercises program on myopia control for Saudi female adolescents. Fifteen female students were recruited from two schools in Riyadh city. They ranged in age from 12 to15 years. A program of eye exercises was practiced by all subjects for six weeks. Visual acuity was measured by the use of an auto refraction device before and after six weeks of training. The results revealed a significant improvement of visual acuity in both right (p=0.028) and left eyes (p= 0.020) indicating that eye exercises as vision therapy-based program could improve visual acuity for female adolescents with myopia.