Late Management of Infantile Esotropia

Abstract

In the management of patients with infantile esotropia there are controversies on the optimal age for surgical correction. Many authors recommend early surgical correction, before two years of age, in order to attain the best visual results. Others maintain that such early surgical correction has no significant, beneficial effect on the visual outcome as compared with the results of surgery at later ages.Out of total 383 patients with infantile esotropia, 53 were operated on at between two and seven years of age. These patients were reviewed to study the effect of late surgical correction, i.e., after two years of age. The patients were analyzed for their motor and sensory states before surgical correction. This will be corrected with their final motor and sensory state after surgical cor- rection of their strabismus. Additionally, the choice and number of surgical procedures employed will be discussed. In summary, these patients had a good chance of alignment of their strabismus, but little of no chance of obtaining stereopsis. Moreover, there was a high incidence of V-pattern esotropia, requiring surgery on the overacting inferior oblique muscles in many cases.