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Objective survey of the prescription of occlusion therapy for amblyopia

  • Clinical Investigation
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Abstract

Purpose

To identify the variation within and consistency amongst orthoptists when prescribing occlusion therapy for amblyopia in an objective survey.

Methods

A questionnaire was designed with five case examples of amblyopic children and distributed at annual meetings of orthoptists in the Netherlands and Germany. It was filled in simultaneously within 15 min in complete silence to avoid any exchange of opinions between orthoptists that would reduce variability. For each case the orthoptists were asked to give their prescription of hours or days of occlusion.

Results

The questionnaire was filled in by 177 Dutch orthoptists and 227 German orthoptists. Their prescriptions of occlusion therapy were classified into five main regimens: part-time; part-time not every day; full-time; also occluding the amblyopic eye; alternating; and no occlusion therapy. The variation was large: the standard deviation was half the average prescribed hours of occlusion for each regimen in each of the five cases. All orthoptists were assigned a rank number for each of the five cases depending on whether their prescription was above or below average. These five rank numbers were not consistently above or consistently below average value per case.

Conclusions

The number of prescribed hours of occlusion varied widely per regimen per case. Orthoptists were not consistently strict or lenient in their prescription of occlusion therapy.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the 404 orthoptists for their hospitality and for filling in the questionnaire. We acknowledge René Eijkemans and Caspar Looman for their help with the statistical analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, Room Ee-1607, Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR , Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Sjoukje E. Loudon, Jan-Roelof Polling, Brigitte Simonsz & Huibert J. Simonsz

Authors
  1. Sjoukje E. Loudon
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  2. Jan-Roelof Polling
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  3. Brigitte Simonsz
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  4. Huibert J. Simonsz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sjoukje E. Loudon.

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Loudon, S.E., Polling, JR., Simonsz, B. et al. Objective survey of the prescription of occlusion therapy for amblyopia. Graefe's Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol 242, 736–740 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-004-0896-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-004-0896-9

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