A 6-year-old kid with near total sightlessness in one of his eyes has presently got a fresh lease to life with all due credit to a daily dose of Nintendo Super Mario gaming being prescribed to him.
Since 4 years of age, Ben Michael was suffering from acute lazy eye syndrome or ambylopia in the right eye and his eyesight had shown a gradual decline in that eye. In the absence of therapy his eyesight loss would have turned out to be a long-term issue.
Michael’s general practitioner advised his referral to specialist Ken Nischal from Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital whose atypical daily treatment prescription did the trick.
Michael’s daily routine comprises of 2 hours worth of playing on the Nintendo Super Mario Kart along with his twin sibling.
Michael is advised to don an eye patch on his normally functioning eye to prompt the lazy eye in working better.
Mom of the twins, thirty-six-year old, Maxine stated that Michael’s eyesight has improved from near blindness to 250% improvement in just the initial seven days.
She added that earlier Michael was incapable of recognizing faces with the affected eye, however presently he could do some extent of reading due to the extraordinary effect of this treatment approach.
Dr. Nischal states that the treatment is helpful to kids having low vision since computer gaming facilitates repeated eye motions that promote training the eye to accurately focus.
He further added that a gaming console promotes swifter therapy and something that the kids could connect to.
Dr. Nischal stated that it is still unknown if low vision improved merely due to enhanced conformity to the patch or if there is physiologic enhancement due to perception-related optical learning.
Dr. Nischal is hopeful that scores of young people and adults with low vision problems could gain from an analogous therapy.
