Monday, September 28, 2009

Visit to Orthorptist

These were the findings of the orthorptist:

- his binocular vision is fine & he does not have depth perception problem
- he has slight childhood long sightedness. He has a bit of problem seeing small objects up close.
- he has slight astigmatism. I think she mentioned a figure of 100.
- his left eye is slightly higher than his right

What needs to be done:

- no need for glasses yet
- use an eye patch on alternate eyes for an hour a day but for no more than an hour, while doing activities. This would help straighten his head and therefore help blood flow and straigthen the spine. It'll also help to reduce the likelihood of lazy eye.
- regular monitoring, on a 6 mthly basis

She explained that childhood long sightedness could resolve by itself as the child grows older. It happens because as a baby, the eye is a bit short & the focal point of the image falls behind the retina. I've read that babies dont see well, so perhaps that's why. As the child grows up, the eye grows too and the focal point should then fall perfectly on the retina. For my son, he's at the correct developmental stage in terms of his childhood long sightedness. She mentioned a figure of 20/30.

She confirmed that short sightedness is hereditry, so we'll have to monitor that too when he's older.

She seemed very experienced as she was very fast is performing various tests; was able to pick up problems quickly; able to perform other tests to confirm her initial findings; able to get my son to co-operate.

She was very approachable, explaining things to me, answered my questions, made sure I understood what she meant about his left eye being higher by showing it to me a few times (cos it was slight & I'm untrained).

Now, the tricky bit is to get my son to wear the patch!

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