| Sumario: | Purpose: Patching has long been an accepted treatment method in treating or preventing amblyopia and strabismus, particularly in infants. Eliya is a non-profit network of rehabilitative kindergartens/nursery schools for the blind or partially sighted in Israel. As many of our children are accepted with recommendations for patching, it was felt that it would be useful both for our staff and the referring doctors to monitor the results of the recommended patching regimen. Methods: An initial group of 29 was identified by the referring documents as having patching recommended. They were located in four out of our five centers throughout the country. In each center, a staff member underwent training by the primary author (an optometrist with 50 years of experience) until they were proficient. The test chosen for monitoring was the Lea Paddle Acuity test. This was both available, easily trainable, and successful. All infants with a recommendation for patching were included in this project; no preselection was done regarding diagnosis or the amount of patching that was recommended. From the initial group of 29, nine children dropped out either due to total non-compliance with patching or a change in the recommendation of the referring doctor. The twenty remaining children consisted of 14 post-cataract surgery (average age at time of surgery was 6.8 weeks) and six with varying retinal problems. They were tested every three to four months for a final testing period of approximately one year from the start of the study. Results: At the end of one year, 12 of the 14 postcataract children showed marked improvement or had normal acuity in the affected eye, while only one of the retinal cases showed any improvement. Conclusions: Patching one eye produced satisfactory results in cases of post-surgical monocular cataracts. It was largely ineffective in cases of retinal defects, especially so as the defects themselves were not resolved prior to the treatment.
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