Lazy eye treatment approved

 The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a virtual reality treatment for children with lazy vision, or lazy eye.

The new treatment, developed by "Luminopia", is based on patients watching television programs or modified films, through virtual reality glasses to improve their vision.

"We are proud to be part of the groundbreaking decision made by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today, to approve the first-of-its-kind digital therapy," the company's CEO, Scott Xiao, said in a statement.

About 3% of children suffer from strabismus, which develops when the brain and eyes stop communicating properly. The brain prefers one eye, which leads to problems seeing in the other eye.

Lazy eye is usually treated, in the traditional way, by obscuring the stronger eye with a patch or misty drops, forcing the brain to rely on the weaker eye.

The Luminopia approach uses television and movies to develop the weaker eye and train the two eyes to work together. Patients watch the show or movie through a headset that displays images for each eye individually.

Images shown to the stronger eye have lower contrast, and images are presented with overlays that force the brain to use both eyes to see properly.

"Children who used the treatment and wore glasses had more improvement in their vision than a similar group of children who did not use the treatment and who only wore corrective glasses during a clinical trial," the company said.

"After 12 weeks of watching shows for one hour a day, six days a week, 62 percent of the children who used the treatment had a significant improvement in their vision," she added.

The company says it has more than 700 hours of therapeutic children's content in its library, and has partnered with animation producers (Nelvana and Sesame Workshop) to develop the software.

This large content prompted children to commit to using glasses by 88%, and the company said that its treatment would be ready for sale next year.

It is noteworthy that this approval from the “FDA” is the second approval for treating diseases based on technology. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a prescription video game called “EndeavorRx”, which treats ADHD in children aged 8 years. And 12 years old.