Amblyopia: Have you heard of it…cure for it in India or abroad?

-By Ganapathi

Anil is a digital strategist and networker based in Hyderabad. He administers a WhatsApp group called HBOM whose objective is to bring service providers, businesses and entrepreneurs to a single platform. It has more than 250 members. It is a no-nonsense group because members are removed when they indulge in inane conversations or when they share timepass-type posts!

Amblyopia has nothing to do with business.

Amblylopia is not a disease, not an illness, but a condition.

A concerned member posted: “Any idea for amblyopia treatment for adults in India or abroad?

Amblyopia means dimness of sight especially in one eye without apparent change in the eye structure. In common language, amblyopia is called ‘lazy eye’.

Amblyopia is derived from the Greek work word ‘amblyopia’: amblys + -opia. According to the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the word made its way to English language circa 1706. Amblyopia’s adjectival form is amblyopic like myopic (myopia: sightlessness).

Like myopia, amblyopia is related to vision: eyesight.

Sri Perecherla

Dr Sri Perecherla is a consultant psychiatrist based in London, and an alumnus of Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad. He explains: “Amblyopia occurs in early childhood. When nerve pathways between the brain and an eye aren’t properly stimulated, the brain favours the other eye. Symptoms include a wandering eye, eyes that may not appear to work together or poor depth perception. Both eyes may be affected. Treatment include eye patches, contact lenses and sometimes surgery.”

Amblyopia is almost like squint eye but not squint eye as the eye looks normal but lazy eye.

Amblyopia is a condition that can occur in one of the two eyes or in both the eyes.

Amblyopia occurs in adults when the movement of the two eyes does not sync: they wander in different directions, they do not work together; thus can appear like a squint eye.

A decent doctor or an ophthalmologist in India should be able to treat amblyopia. When myopia is treated, certainly India has credible and creditable ophthalmologists. “India is the Master of Medicine,” Dr Sri emphasizes. “The land of Sushruta.”

Sushruta is an Indian physician, author of the treatise ‘The Compendium of Sushruta’ and regarded as the ‘father of surgery’.

One can get a cure for amblyopia in India, or can always travel abroad depending upon one’s resources.

However, neither a doctor nor a guru nor a baba may not be able to rectify or cure one’s myopic or amblyopic vision of life.

(Ganapathi is Sweden based consultant editor of Telugu Rajyam)