Good news gaming fans, now you have a legitimate, medical reason to play video games - Canadian doctors have claimed playing Tetris could help treat lazy eye, according to a report on the
BBC. The McGill University team discovered that playing the popular tile matching game could help train both eyes to work together. In a small study consisting of 18 adults, results showed playing Tetris worked better than patching the good eye to make the weaker one work harder. Researchers now want to try the same study on children to see if it has similar effects in treating the condition. An estimated one out of fifty children suffer from lazy eye, known by its proper medical term as amblyopia. Symptoms occur when the vision in one eye does not develop properly, which often causes sufferers to squint. Without treatment, lazy eye can lead to permanent blindness in severe cases, which is exactly why doctors try to intervene as early as possible. The standard procedure in dealing with lazy eye is to cover the one "good eye" with a patch in order to train the affected eye to work harder, and children often have to wear said patches for much of the day or even over the course of several months. Dr Robert Hess and colleagues in Montreal now believe playing Tetris could be a good alternative to patching, particularly for adults as they tend not to benefit from that particular treatment in the first place. It is now believed that any number of video games could be used as effective treatments for lazy eye, not just Tetris. Dr Hess said of the latest technique:
"When we get the two eyes working together, we find the vision improves. "It's much better than patching, much more enjoyable, it's faster and it seems to work better."