Vision Therapy and Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation
Vision Therapy is designed to help with visual problems in adults and children that cannot be solved with glasses alone.
Vision therapy or Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation is a series of therapeutic activities tailored to each individual’s needs. These activities are performed to help provide feedback that can retrain your brain on how to use your eyes more efficiently together as a team. The activities are performed in-office one to two times per week under doctor supervision, and are supplemented with activities at home during the week.
Vision Therapy or Neuro-Optometric Rehab can be used to treat:
- Crossed or lazy eyes (amblyopia)
- Double vision
- Difficulty focusing
- Frequent loss of place while reading
- Confusing similar looking words
- Poor reading comprehension
- Sloppy handwriting
- Failure to recognize the same word in the next sentence
- Complaints of eyes hurting or headaches after reading
- Avoidance of close work (such as reading)
- Attention problems
- Poor eye hand coordination (particularly useful in sports)
- Lack of eye contact, like in autism
- Motion sickness
- Difficulty copying from one place to another
- Omission of small words while reading
- Very bright students that struggle with reading and grades
- Acquired or Traumatic Brain Injury visual and coordination problems
Vision Therapy done successfully will:
- Develop normal coordination and teamwork of the two eyes (binocular vision)
- Improve visual comfort, ease, and efficiency
- Change how a patient processes or interprets visual information
Here is a great example of a Vision Therapy success story
“Stereo Sue” is an example of an adult that obtained binocular vision through vision therapy. Read about Sue Barry’s experience.
To view how vision impacts reading and learning through the eyes of an educational specialist, watch the video and check out the blog.
The video above is from Dan L. Fortenbacher, O.D., FCOVD.
To determine if you or your child are a candidate for a vision therapy program, stop in for a comprehensive eye exam, including a binocular vision evaluation. Remember that vision is more than 20/20. 20/20 eyesight is a measurement of visual acuity (or how well you can see at 20 feet what should normally be seen clearly at 20 feet). Most eye doctors do not evaluate for many other important aspects of normal vision, such as:
- Eye focusing
- Eye coordination
- Eye teaming (Binocular Vision)
- Eye movement
- Visual perceptual skills
- Color vision
Take this vision quiz to see just how much you know about your vision and eye care.
If you are a teacher or educator and would like some additional resources regarding vision therapy, click here.