Clinical and Functional Imaging Changes Induced from Vision Therapy in Patients with Convergence Insufficiency

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

7-1-2019

Abstract

Office-Based Vergence/Accommodative Therapy (OBVAT) is an effective treatment for convergence insufficiency (CI) and remediates symptoms in about 75% of patients. Hence, the study of CI patients can serve as a systems-level model to understand the neural mechanisms evoked from rehabilitation. Symptomatic young adult CI patients (N=25) participated in 12 hours of OBVAT and were compared to 25 binocularly normal controls (BNC) using unpaired t-tests. CI patients have significantly lower near point of convergence and positive fusional vergence and were more symptomatic compared to BNC (p<0.0001). Using paired t-tests, significant differences (p<0.0001) were observed between CI patients' baseline and post-OBVAT measurements where the near point of convergence decreased, positive fusional vergence increased, and the results from the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) decreased. Using paired t-tests, the mean beta weights of the functional activity significantly increased for the frontal eye fields (p<0.01) and the oculomotor vermis (p<0.05) for CI patients post-OBVAT compared to baseline measurements. These data demonstrate that OBVAT increases functional activity within the brain and improves clinical function and visual symptoms in CI patients.

Identifier

85077838073 (Scopus)

ISBN

[9781538613115]

Publication Title

Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society EMBS

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857163

ISSN

1557170X

PubMed ID

31945855

First Page

104

Last Page

109

Grant

R01EY023261

Fund Ref

National Eye Institute

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