Convergence Insufficiency

Your eyes are designed to work together as a team to produce a single image. To do this, they both must aim and focus on the same point. This skill is known as eye teaming. When you look at an object up close, your eyes must turn in (they must, converge) in order to maintain proper eye teaming.

Convergence Insufficiency (CI) is the inability of the eyes to converge comfortably and sustain that convergence while focusing on an object up close, such as when reading a book or working on a computer.

Convergence insufficiency is an important diagnosis. In fact, the National Institute of Health spent more than $14 million dollars studying this condition and finding out how to treat it; it was researched in 9 major hospital / university clinics.

A child with CI will find it difficult and uncomfortable to concentrate on reading and other up-close activities for extended periods of time. This is often mistaken to be an attention disorder in school.

• Reading Slowly

• Loss of Place when Reading

• Difficulty with Concentration

• Poor eye-hand coordination (cannot catch a ball)

• Trouble remembering what is read

• Squints, closes, or covers one eye while reading

• Unusual posture / head tilt when reading or writing

An adult with CI often experiences chronic, unexplained, dizziness when reading or working, and often struggles with feeling comfortable while driving. They complain of intense eye discomfort and is often mistaken as adult onset anxiety.

• Eye Strain

• Headaches

• Blurry Vision

• Double Vision

• Dizziness while using a computer

• Car sickness / motion sickness

• Falling asleep while reading

The Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial (the $14 million dollar study mentioned above) found that optometric vision therapy is the most effective way of treating the condition. They reported that a specifically prescribed program of weekly in-office therapy, combined with at-home activities has proven to be the best approach to train the brain to utilize both eyes together comfortably and efficiently, with the goal being to eliminate the symptoms and improve the eye teaming abilities to permit you to read and perform near point activities comfortably, for extended periods, without fatigue.

When a thorough evaluation is performed, convergence insufficiency is often found alongside other diagnoses, such as issues with accommodation (the eye-focusing system) or with the oculomotor (eye-tracking) systems. Therefore, we use multiple tools to treat these problems.