Glasses or contact lenses prescription

At the end of the functional vision assessment, prescription lenses may be prescribed for certain vision conditions. It is important to know that our office does not make glasses. We refer all our patients to other optometrists and opticians. We encourage patients to return to his (her) general eye doctor’s office to fill the glasses prescription.

Our approach to prescribing lenses is different than that taken by general optometrists or ophthalmologists. Our approach is functional and focuses on the underlying visual problem. When we prescribe lenses, they may serve any of the following functions:

Preventive lenses: To prevent a vision problem from progression, such as myopia control.

Development lenses: To guide vision system developing and help cope with visual stress.

Remedial lenses: A temporary fix for a specific symptom/problem; designed to provide a “clutch “until the therapy can be completed.

Vision Therapy

Vision Therapy (VT for short) helps to build the eye-brain-body connection in patients with binocular vision dysfunction or visual-perceptual challenges. It is individualized vision program based on the results of assessment.  An effective therapy program must be directed by an expert in the field of developmental optometry. Since human’s  visual system is very complex, only a doctor with the appropriate training is qualified to determine which techniques should be used in your vision therapy program.

Vision skills is learned and then is trainable. Like sports and music, to build efficient vision skills requires practice every day.  A typical Vision Therapy treatment program includes the following:

In office therapy:  generally weekly but it may vary based on the vision problems. Many important visual activities can only be done in the office with a doctor or vision therapist. The appointment generally last 45 minutes to 1 hour in length. The training session will start with review home support activities log sheet and any questions raised during home therapy.

Mid therapy progress evaluation: every 10-12 sessions of the therapy, we will evaluate the functional visual skills to see what the gain of the vision skills is from last 10-12 weeks of hard work and this result also to guide our vision therapy program for the next 10-12 session.

Home support activities at least 5 days a week:  newly acquired visual skills need to be reinforced and made automatic through repetition and by integration with motor and cognitive skills.

Graduation and post-graduation: The goal of the vision therapy is to learn adequate visual skills for better performance at school and at work.  When this  goal is achieved, we are happy to see patients to graduate from our vision therapy program. Upon graduation, a guideline of maintenance therapy will be prescribed, and patients will be asked to come back to our office for re-evaluation at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months after graduation. After that, patient will see their original general eye doctor for regular eye examination every year.

The length of the treatment will vary, Therapy programs can range in length from at least 20 sessions to 2-3 years. Most programs last between 6-9 months.

At Academy of Vision and learning, we provide our vision therapy treatment program to

• Patients of all ages with strabismus (eye turn) or amblyopia (“lazy” eye)
• Children who struggle with learning, due to delays in visual development (including eye movement or focusing disorders, or visual processing delays)
• Patients of all ages who suffered from physical and /or emotional stress (head trauma, including concussion or mild traumatic brain injury, stroke)
• Adults with complains of double vision, headaches, eye strain with computer use
• Athletes with a desire to enhance visual function.

Primitive reflex integration 

If primitive reflexes are still retained (or present), the patient will be given a series of movement activities to integrate them. This helps the patient to control over their movement and cognitive process!

Syntonics, or Optometric Phototherapy or Light Therapy, 

A branch of ocular science dealing with the application of selected light frequencies through the eyes. It is used in the treatment of a variety of vision disorders including: strabismus (turned eyes), amblyopia (lazy eye), focusing, and convergence problems. Specifically, syntonics is used to enlarge the “functional” visual field of patients. Syntonics is also very helpful to relieve headache for patients with head trauma.

We utilize this phototherapy in the office and/or as part of home therapy, depending on the needs of the patient.