Clinical effectiveness study of transcranial direct current stimulation in amblyopic children

Abstract

Purpose: to assess the neurophysiological effect and clinical effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation in combination with drug therapy in amblyopic children. Material and methods. The study involved 32 healthy children in the age of 5-12 years and 97 patients of the same age with refractive strabismic amblyopia. All study subjects underwent standard examination including ophthalmological (visometry, refractometry in normal conditions and in cycloplegia, biomicroscopy, ophthalmoscopy, type of vision), neurophysiological methods (determination of retinal electric sensitivity threshold, electric lability of optic nerve, amplitude and latency period of visual evoked potentials, electroencephalogram wave amplitudes, localization of peak electrical activity area of the cerebral cortex), assessment of neuropsychic development and estimation of mental development coefficient with age tests. Results. Dynamics of neurophysiological parameters shows that healthy children develop fully functional retina, visual cortex and cortical-subcortical connections by 12 years. Children with refractive strabismic amblyopia in all age groups show statistically significant (p<0.05) deterioration of neurophysiological parameters of the visual analyzer, retardation of corticalsubcortical connections formation and lower electrical activity of the cerebral cortex. Amblyopic children show lower coefficients of mental development accompanied by intellectual deficiency and deterioration of learning ability. Proposed treatment method improved neurophysiological parameters of the visual analyzer in 83.5% of cases and increased visual acuity in 81.4% of cases. Improvement of psychological development resulted in better logical thinking, memory reinforcement and better adaptation to school educational environment in 86.6% of children.