Red and Green Lenses

Happy Monday!

Today I wanted to talk to you about Red and Green lenses that we use in therapy. These are most commonly used for when a child has a lazy eye or amblyopia. This means that one eye does not develop eye sight properly and therefore prevents the child from using both eyes (binocular vision). Using the red and green lenses will improve the ability of that eye to work as a unit with the other eye. Since one eye is not being paid attention to, there might be deficiencies in the following: depth perception, spatial judgment and eye hand coordination.

The activities we do in therapy involve wearing the red/green lenses and a red/green film, with alternating red and green stripes, that is placed over print. Alright, let’s say the red lens is over your right eye and green is over your left eye. When you look at the print with the red/green film on it, everything underneath the red stripe is seen with the right eye and everything underneath the green stripe will be seen with the left eye. If a child is suppressing an eye, it will be seen in activities like this.  For example, if the child is suppressing their right eye. The right eye has the red lens over it so when the child looks at the print, everything in the red stripe will be black. Our goal is to get both eyes to work equally together.

Please schedule a comprehensive exam at our Nashville location if you feel like your child might have amblyopia. Call us at 615-386-3036 to set up an appointment.