BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Amblyopia is almost an incurable vision loss after 9 years old. There are several ways to treat, the aim of this study is to treat amblyopia before 9 years old with full-time closing of healthy eye with gradual reduction of eye closure.

METHODS: This cross sectional study was done on children less than 9 years old referred to eye clinic of Babol with amblyopia. Visual acuity was recorded with the best glasses and treatment was carried out using full-time closing of healthy eye, then 6, 4, 2 and after 1-hour conservative treatment until 9 years old. Gender, age, order in treatment, cause of amblyopia, and relapse were recorded. Success was defined as an increase in visual acuity of at least 2 lines of Snellen chart.

FINDINGS: Improvement of visual acuity in the amblyopic eye at the end of treatment was 3.42 ± 2.51 Snellen lines, which was statistically significant (p<0.001). There was a reverse moderate correlation between age and the rate of affected eye improvement (r=0.395, p<0.001). In general, the success rate and failure in treatment of 87 amblyopic eye were 74.4% and 25/3%, respectively.

CONCLUSION: The results showed that full-time eye closure by gradually reducing the time improving amblyopia. This method regardless of gender and cause of amblyopia have led to improvement of amblyopia. Improvement of visual acuity had an inverse relationship with age, therefore screening is recommended for children at a younger age.