| Sumario: | Background: The rationale for treatment of intermittent central suppression (ICS) is a concern in reading underachievement. Diagnostic techniques for ICS have been previously described, and a treatment study for ICS showed improvements in binocularity, symptoms, and reading scores. The next step is to look at long-term improvements with treatment of ICS with rapid alternation. Methods: ICS-specific QOL questionnaires were sent to 50 post-therapy patients in a private optometric clinic who had exclusively or almost exclusively used rapid alternation to treat their ICS. Eighteen patients or their parents returned questionnaires. Using patient pre-therapy examination and later post-therapy re-examination records of patients with returned questionnaires, long-term retention of ICS improvements was analyzed, as well as long-term changes in QOL. Results: Treatment reduced suppression periods, thereby increasing the amount of time during waking hours that these individuals are truly binocular. Those changes showed little degradation over a 2 1/4 year period. This was done with no intervening maintenance therapy. Conclusion: QOL scores improved and remained improved over this two-and-a-quarter-year time period. Since the ICS was treated largely in isolation, and since the QOL changed for the better with this single-factor targeted therapy, we can say without hesitation that increased time through waking hours with true binocularity is beneficial. Further, if ICS is treated to increase binocularity, positive changes are retained over time. Loss of improvements is minimal. Treating ICS improves lives, and those improvements hold over time.
|
|---|