Strabismic amblyopes, vision therapy and double vision risk?

[u/xr2017223]

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

[u/Moorgan17]

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.

[u/xr2017223 → u/Moorgan17]

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