Mitchell Scheiman, OD.

AURORA, Ohio—The College of Optometrists in Vision Development has issued a request for patients between the ages of nine and 14 with symptomatic convergence insufficiency to participate in the National Eye Institute’s five-year, $8 million Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial – Attention and Reading Study (CITT-ART).

Convergence insufficiency is a common condition that affects about 5 percent of the school-age population, according to Mitchell Scheiman, OD, the CITT-ART study chair.

The randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial is a national multi-centered, collaborative research project that will compare the effectiveness of office-based vision therapy and office-based placebo vision therapy for the treatment of symptomatic convergence insufficiency, develop more precise estimates of the success rates of convergence insufficiency treatment, and identify factors that may be associated with successful treatment of convergence insufficiency.

Approximately 324 patients will participate in the two-year study with a six-month follow-up visit for all subjects. For further information, optometrists treating patients aged nine to 14 years with symptomatic convergence insufficiency, should contact Scheiman at mscheiman@salus.edu or phone: (215) 276-1427.