The incidence of pseudomypia (school myopia) has rapidly increased in recent years as a result increased use of video display equipment. This phenomenon has attracted our attention, and an attempt at treating pseudomyopia by acupuncture was made. Our findings were reported at the 8th academic meeting of the Chubu (central Japan) district which was held in 1989.
We selected the left and right taiyang as the treatment (meridian) points. Only 15-year-old female students were enrolled in this study which constitutes our second report. Electrical stimulation, which was delivered through an acupuncture needle inserted into the treatment point, was applied for a shortened duration of 5 minutes (the usual duration of electrical stimulation is longer than 5 minutes). Visual acuity at the initial visit (March 23, 1990) was 0.5 in the left eye and 0.7 in the right eye. After three treatment sessions, the visual acuity was 1.2 in both the left and right eyes. Visual acuity was significantly improved, and was ranked as class A (above 1.0) in both eyes. Visual acuity was examined before the final treatment session after 42 days of therapy (November 7, 1990), and was found to be 1.0 in the left eye and 1.2 in the right eye. The beneficial effects of acupuncture were clearly still present at this time. The results of the follow-up examination of visual acuity performed in April 1991 were ranked as class A in both eyes. The study was conducted according to the nonrepetetive type (A-B-C type) of the single case experimental design method. Treatment results were assessed by the least squares linear regression technique and the ido heikin ho which showed that the improvement in visual acuity was objective.