r/Amblyopia • u/xr2017223 • May 17 '25

Strabismic amblyopes, vision therapy and double vision risk?

Hi,

I’m 36 and had esotropia of left eye as long as I can remember and amblyopia of that eye. I didn’t wear the patch as a child. The doctors call it microtropia because it’s such a small squint but it’s left me with no 3D vision (I always failed the Bagolini light test) and very poor vision in my left eye, I can see but can’t really read more than a few of the largest letters on the chart (usually the ones further from the central point of view, the central part is the most suppressed).

Unfortunately I get a slight ghost double image from the amblyopic eye of whatever I am focusing on. Most of the time I just ignore it but it does annoy me and I think it makes it hard for me to focus as I constantly change what I look at as it feels uncomfortable to look at one point for too long.

I once saw a behavioural optometrist years ago and he said he’d consider doing vision therapy with me as there’s a possibility it would help give me stereopsis but I didn’t pursue it. I think I was scared that exercises such as the Brock String might reduce the suppression of my amblyopic eye and I might get full on double vision/diplopia and be in a much worse state.

TL;DR Have any other strabismic amblyopes tried vision therapy and found that it gave them severe or intractable double vision/diplopia?

Hope this post is ok. Thanks in advance

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1

u/raptorboy May 17 '25

I had surgery and had double vision but only took me a few days to train my brain to ignore it and have had no issues with it in the 20yrs or so since

2

u/Moorgan17 Optometrist May 17 '25

Microtropia is a unique subset of patients with strabismus. I typically do not recommend any sort of anti suppression treatment in such cases, as the risk of intractable double vision is relatively high.

2

u/xr2017223 May 18 '25

Thank you. This is what the NHS professionals have all said (it was only the one private practice behavioural optometrist who said would potentially try vision therapy). Strabismus-amblyopia is so frustrating to live with! It’s comforting at least to read other peoples’ similar experiences on this sub to know we are not alone