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

Alvarez, Tara L.; Scheiman, Mitchell; Santos, Elio M.; Morales, Cristian; Yaramothu, Chang; d'Antonio-Bertagnolli, John Vito; Gohel, Suril; Biswal, Bharat B.; Li, Xiaobo; IEEE

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 (p0.0001). Using paired t-tests, significant differences (p0.0001) 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 (p0.01) and the oculomotor vermis (p0.05) 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.

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Título según WOS: ID WOS:000557295300025 Not found in local WOS DB
Título de la Revista: 42ND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY: ENABLING INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR GLOBAL HEALTHCARE EMBC'20
Editorial: IEEE
Fecha de publicación: 2019
Página de inicio: 104
Página final: 109
Notas: ISI