A majority of people who wear contacts and eye glasses have some degree of anisometropia. Anisometropia is a condition in which one person’s eyes have different refractive powers. For example, some patients may be slightly nearsighted (myopic) in one eye and very nearsighted in the other eye. Most eye care professionals often reserve the use of this term for cases in which the difference is significant, around 2.00 diopters or more.

There is a new study that was published in the December issue of Journal of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus that indicates that performing LASIK on children with high hyperopic or myopic anisometropic amblyopia can effectively reduce the refractive errors and improve both visual acuity and stereopsis. The study, conducted in China, investigated the efficacy of LASIK for reducing anisometropia in 74 amblyopic children aged 6 to 14 years.