R 306
Eye movements in amblyopia
A. A. Zubcov-Iwantscheff
The goal of the paper is to give an overview on eye movements in amblyopia.
Two primary purposes of eye movements are to provide for accurate tracking and retinal image stabilisation of moving objects in the visual field.
In adult amblyopic eyes the fixation process is being characterised through increased drifts in amplitude and frequency mostly nasally directed like those seen with fatigue or loss of attention (Shor and Flom 1975; Ciuffreda et al.1980). Few cases of adult strabismic amblyopes and only one child were reported to have decreased drifts on fixational pattern after occlusion therapy (Ciuffreda et al.1979, Selenow and Ciuffreda1986). Only short term response to occlusion therapy are documented in the literature.
Flom et al.1980 showed good short term improvement in frequency of saccadic intrusions in strabismic amblyope after occlusion therapy. Other disorders of the saccadic system reported in strabismic amblyopes like hypometria or longer saccadic latencies were interpreted as rather being related to strabismus than to amblyopia (Ciuffreda et al.1979).
Smooth pursuit was shown to have overall reduced pursuit gain, to be inaccurate and have directional asymetries and frequent saccadic substitution (Ciuffreda et al.1979).
There have been reports of asymetric optokinetik responses with greater response for nasalwards than for temporalwards motion and reduced vestibuloocular reflex in adult strabismic amblyopic eyes (Shor 1983).
Abteilung für Kinderaugenheilkunde, Universitätsaugenklinik J.-W.-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland