Amblyopia is best described as:

• A. lazy eye
• B. nearsightedness
• C. farsightedness
• D. double vision

Answer: (A)

Amblyopia describes reduced vision in one eye that results from the brain and the eye not developing together during early childhood. It’s often called lazy eye because the brain relies more on the other eye and suppresses input from the weaker eye. The eye itself may look normal and may not be fixed by glasses alone, since the neural pathways didn’t develop properly. Early detection is important, and treatment aims to encourage use of the weaker eye (for example, patching the stronger eye or using medication to blur the dominant eye) plus vision therapy to improve neural connections. This is different from refractive errors like near-sightedness or far-sightedness, which are about the eye’s focusing, or from double vision, which involves misalignment and seeing two images.