To compare effects of a 2-hour, 6-hour, and full-time patching regimens in monocular amblyopia patients under 10 years of age.

This study recruited monocular amblyopia patients under 10 years of age. The patients were divided into a 2-hour patching group (group A, n=34), a 6-hour patching group (group B, n=33), and a full time patching group (group C, n=28) according to the patching time. A prospective analysis was then performed. The ages at the start of treatment, differences of corrected visual acuity between the 2 eyes and severity of the 3 groups were compared and analyzed. On the final evaluation, 'success' was defined when the difference of corrected visual acuity between the 2 eyes converted into logMAR was less than 0.1.

The ages at the start of treatment in group A, B, C were 5.61, 5.48 and 5.71 years, respectively. The best corrected visual acuity of an amblyopic eye converted into logMAR changed to 0.13 after treatment in group A, to 0.16 in group B and to 0.19 in group C. Although visual acuity after the treatment was increased significantly compared to the beginning of treatment in all 3 groups, the final visual acuity showed no statistically significant difference among the 3 groups. Because the occlusion therapy success rates were 70.6%, 69.7% and 64.3% for groups A, B and C, respectively, there was no statistically significant difference.

In the 2-hour, 6-hour, and full-time patching regimens, all patients showed a significant improvement in visual acuity although their success rates were not significantly different. Therefore, the part-time patching therapy favored by patients and parents is effective for the first treatment of amblyopia.