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Augenzentrum Vista Alpina AG and the services provided by Augenzentrum Vista Alpina are not legally or otherwise affiliated with Vista Klinik AG, Laser Vista AG, Vista Klinik Net AG or Vista Diagnostics AG.

Why is early detection so important?

Seeing and both eyes working together largely develops during the first year. However, both are still susceptible to dysfunction up to approx. 10 years of age.

In order for vision to develop normally, the small child must actively use both eyes from the very beginning. However, one eye not working correctly leads to weak-sightedness (amblyopia).

A cross-eyed child (strabismus) only actively uses one of his or her two eyes. Vision is unable to develop in the crossed eye, resulting in abnormal vision with reduced visual acuity.

In the event strabismus is not present and deficient light refraction (astigmatism, hypermetropia) is detected in one eye, vision in the affected eye does not develop properly - it becomes weak-sighted (amblyopic).

The weak-sightedness must be corrected in the first year of life to prevent irreversible damage: the earlier deficits in a child’s vision are detected and treated, the lower the chance of remaining debility/defect of vision.

Weak-sightedness is typically treated by encouraging the brain to train the weaker eye. For this purpose, the eye with normal vision is covered with a patch several hours a day.

Deficient vision in childhood, which is not detected and treated early on, can entail the following irreversible visual defects:

• Developing weak-sightedness (amblyopia), which can no longer be corrected

• Loss or reduction of binocular and three-dimensional vision