What Complications Can Untreated Farsightedness Cause?

Amblyopia

Amblyopia (lazy eye) is a condition where one eye is able to focus considerably better than the other eye. Over time, this causes the nerve and muscles that move one eye to work incorrectly, and this makes that eye look lazy or inactive in terms of movement and function. The type of amblyopia caused by untreated farsightedness is called a refractive lazy eye. This condition is best described as the eyes having two different degrees of refractive errors, which most often includes farsightedness. This type of lazy eye develops because the patient's brain depends upon the image produced by the eye with less of an uncorrected refractive error. This results in the individual's brain tuning out the blurred image produced by the other eye, leading to general disuse of that eye, and disuse causes adverse effects on the muscles and nerves controlling it. When the muscles and nerves that move the eye no longer know how to work correctly due to being stagnant for a time, the eye is considered a lazy eye. The refractive error in the lazy eye will continue to worsen because the eye no longer exercises any effort to focus on objects. The treatment of refractive lazy eye involves the correction of the refractive errors in both eyes, and it usually will require some extent of wearing a patch over the non-lazy eye.

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