New clinical aspects of stimulus deprivation amblyopia.

An analysis of clinical data from 11 patients with stimulus deprivation amblyopia showed that amblyopia occurs after monocular visual deprivation that begins between birth and the age of 5 3/4 years and lasts for one to 36 months. Contrary to previous impressions, stimulus deprivation amblyopia does respond to occlusion therapy of the nondeprived eye. As a rule, improvement in visual acuity can be expected in patients whose visual deprivation began after the age of 30 months. In those patients whose visual deprivation began at birth or during infancy, treatment was unsuccessful when started after the age of 2 1/2 years. However, clinical data from one patient treated successfully during infancy indicated that the deleterious effects of visual deprivation from birth may be preventable.