Comparison between patching and interactive binocular treatment in amblyopia: A randomized clinical trial

Abstract Purpose To compare the effect of amblyopia therapy on cases who received interactive binocular treatment (I-BiT™) with those who received standard patching of the dominant eye with placebo I-BiT™. Methods In this randomized clinical trial, 38 unilateral amblyopic children (3–10 years old) were studied. All unilateral amblyopic children who had best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) worse than 0.30 logMAR or a difference of two Snellen lines of BCVA between their two eyes were included, and children who did not complete at least 75% of amblyopia treatment were excluded from this study. Eventually, a total of 19 and 21 subjects were included in case and control groups, respectively. Cases played I-BiT™ games, while controls had standard patch therapy and played with placebo I-BiT™ games, both for one month. All subjects were examined at baseline and after one-month therapy. Results BCVA improved significantly in both groups after one-month treatment (case: P = 0.003, control: P  Conclusions I-BiT™ game and patching with placebo game had similar BCVA improvement in amblyopic children after one-month treatment. It is suggested to conduct further randomized clinical trials with a larger sample size and longer duration of study and assessment of its recurrence.