What Is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is a treatment program that is supervised, individualized and programed by a licensed Doctor of Optometry to help build and develop the visual skills in patients with binocular vision dysfunction and or visual perceptual deficits.

Lenses, prisms, filters and advanced technologies are utilized in office to build neural connections to teach, correct and make visual skills more efficient for the patient. As the patient masters the activity prescribed, the activity is loaded adding additional visual, auditory, motor or cognitive processing.

Patients of any age whose eyes do not work together, eye-teaming problems (strabismus or amblyopia), patients who have visual difficulties due to head trauma (concussions or strokes), issues with eye strain or double vision with computer use (decompensation of visual skills) can benefit from in office vision therapy. Vision therapy can also benefit athletes who wish to enhance their eye-hand coordination to improve their performance.

A comprehensive eye examination is required before having a binocular vision assessment at Coast Vision Therapy. Those notes should be faxed to our office before the initial evaluation.

An initial binocular vision assessment is completed in office to assess relative strengths and weaknesses to determine the prognosis and the length of the therapy program.

After the initial evaluation, it is determined if visual processing testing is needed which looks in great detail how the brain processes the information gathered by the visual system. Visual perception, visual motor integration, laterality, directionality and bilateral integration are all assessed. These findings will be written into a formal report and discussed at a consultation with the patient and or parent.

Vision therapy consists of weekly visits where home activities are assigned to help enforce what was learned in office and speed the rate of progression. After 10 sessions of in office therapy sessions, a re-evaluation will occur to determine gains that have been made and potential further therapy to be completed. The length of the vision therapy program is based on severity of diagnosis with a basic visual skill dysfunction being a few months in time whereas an eye turn can be up to a year. Our goal is to graduate a patient from vision therapy. This occurs with the visual skills and knowledge of how to use the eyes is optimized to improve function and overall quality of life.