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What is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is a series of exercises designed to improve the functioning and efficiency of a visual system. We start with exercises that are simple and fairly easy and then gradually progress to a more challenging and complicated task. Each vision therapy program is individually tailored to meet the needs of the patient. vision therapy can be used to treat conditions like convergence insufficiency e, strabismus( eye turn in or out), amblyopia
( lazy eye) and oculomotor dysfunction(eye-tracking problem). also, so many children diagnosed with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, and dyslexia have functional vision problems that interfere with learning and can benefit from proper vision treatment.

Now American Association for  pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus categorizes vision therapy into:

  • “Orthoptic vision therapy” so-called by optometrists are a series of exercises usually weekly over several months performed in the optometric office. Orthoptic eye exercises (orthoptics), as used by pediatric ophthalmologists and orthoptists, are eye exercises to improve binocular function and are taught in the office and carried out at home. ”Orthoptics” is a well-established profession performed by “Orthoptists ”who work within the sub-specialty of ophthalmology. Orthoptists evaluate and measure eye deviations, manage amblyopia treatment and treat small intermittent symptomatic eye deviations.


  • Behavioral/perceptual vision therapy – eye exercises to improve visual processing and visual perception



          

  • Vision therapy for prevention or correction of myopia (nearsightedness)



In vision therapy, we start with activities that are easy to do and gradually build as skills develop. This is the way that we learn things naturally when we were kids.

 When we were kids we had to learn to crawl before we could walk and we had to learn to walk before we learned to run, each new thing that you learn becomes a building block upon which you can learn some new skills. In vision therapy we want the activities to be just challenging enough to keep our patients'( whether child or adult) interested and motivated and at the same time not too difficult so that they become frustrated. The goal is to do each activity at about an 80 to 90% success level with any activity or exercise If the patient is hundred percent successful they are showing you that they already know how to do this whatever the skill they are practicing. What they already know instead of learning something new, but if the failure rates get up to high then they get frustrated because they see it too difficult for them. So the tasks should be neither too tough nor too easy. With each new skill that's developed the goal is to get that skill to reach a level where the patient can do it without even thinking about it or in simple words we try to make it involuntary ie., they can do it anytime when they are required to.

This is the sole motto of vision therapy so that the person doesn't have to keep doing vision therapy forever.

Most of the changes that we see in vision therapy is the changes in the brain that controls the eye, how they, move, the accuracy, the precision of the eye movements, etc.


 Just like we go to the gym to increase our muscle function and to strengthen them similarly vision therapy also deals with the eye muscles and enhances their function level. 

Vision therapy also induces motivation in the brain through all sorts of exercises so that the patient who earlier thought that the task was impossible can now complete that task with Precision And accuracy at ease.



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