They often lack good vision due to difficulties in compliance with patching and the wearing of a contact lens and glasses. Theoretically, a lens implant will decrease the amount of time these children will go without clear vision, thereby improving the success of amblyopia treatment and prevention. The Infant Aphakia Treatment Study will, therefore, be crucial to our understanding of lens implantation in these children and to our future surgical practices. It awaits funding approval from the National Eye Institute. The planning study involved 16 centers and about 45 patients per year over the course of three years.
Initial data shows excellent results.
In patients who received an IOL, investigators achieved good visual outcomes but had slightly more complications and reoperations. Lens implantation does not appear to increase the risk of glaucoma, nor does it seem to change the growth of the eye. Until we know the results of studies like this one, pushing the age limit on implantation must be an individual decision. As in the other subspecialties, advances in our understanding of the pediatric eye has raised more questions. We now better comprehend children's growth curves and changes in refractive power, but debate continues over the lens power at which we should leave a child as he or she grows and changes.