Does home-based vision therapy affect symptoms in young adults with convergence insufficiency?

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of extended home-based vision therapy as a treatment for symptomatic convergence insufficiency (CI) in young exophoric adults. Twenty-four adults with symptomatic exophoria at near with convergence insufficiency were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received 24 weeks of vision training, while the control group received no therapy. The three major outcome measures were the scores on the convergence insufficiency symptom survey V15 (CISS-V15), the near point of convergence and the positive fusional vergence at near. Only subjects from the experimental group demonstrated statistically and clinically significant changes in the CISS-V15 score (improvement of 20 points), near point of convergence (improvement of 5.5 cm) and positive fusional vergence at near (improvement of 15 Δ). No significant changes of either symptoms or signs were evident for the control group. The results presented in this study showed that extending the time and number of home based therapy techniques might be an effective treatment modality in adult subjects with CI. This therapy might be an alternative way for treatment of symptomatic exophoric CI subjects, who cannot attend office sessions