amblyopia research Recent results for a national amblyopia study found that the atropine eye drops, when placed in the unaffected eye once a day, work as well as eye patching and may encourage better compliance. The study was conducted at 47 clinical sites throughout North America. In addition, A Randomized Trial Comparing Part-time Versus Minimal-time Patching for Moderate Amblyopia (Two v. Six) is being conducted to determine whether the visual acuity improvement obtained with part-time (6 hours) patching is equivalent to the visual acuity improvement obtained with minimal patching (2 hours) for moderate amblyopia. Recent findings show that patching the unaffected eye of children with moderate amblyopia for two hours daily works as well as patching the eye for six hours. Shorter patching time should lead to better compliance with treatment and improved quality of life for children with amblyopia. Most of the available data on the natural history of amblyopia and success rates of its treatment with either patching or drug therapy are retrospective and uncontrolled. Despite the common occurrence of amblyopia, there is little quality data on treatment of this condition. Thus, there is much to be learned about the course of treated amblyopia, to provide more precise estimates of success rates and to identify factors that may be associated with successful and unsuccessful treatment. Available data suggest that the success rate with drug therapy is as good as, if not better than, the success rate with occlusion therapy for mild to moderate degrees of amblyopia. If this is true, for many children with amblyopia, drug therapy may be the preferred initial therapy since it appears to be more readily accepted by the children and parents. Despite data to support the use of drug therapy as a primary therapy for amblyopia, it has gained only limited use among pediatric ophthalmologists. A definitive study comparing the outcomes from occlusion therapy and drug therapy is justified in order to determine if new practice guidelines for treatment of amblyopia are needed. Both atropine and patching are effective treatments for moderate amblyopia in children in the age range of 3 to less than 7 years old. Patching has the potential advantage of a more rapid improvement in visual acuity and possibly a slightly better acuity outcome, whereas atropine has the potential advantage of easier administration and lower cost. Data are inconclusive about whether atropine may cause a transient treatment-related reduction of acuity in the good eye more often than does patching. However, there is reasonable confidence that atropine tests did not have a lasting adverse effect on acuity of the sound eye. Both patching and atropine are appropriate treatment modalities for the initial management of moderate amblyopia in children.