Long-Term Surgical Outcomes of Early Surgery for Intermittent Exotropia in Children Less than 4 Years of Age

Abstract

ABSTRACTPurpose: To investigate the long-term outcomes of intermittent exotropia surgery for children less than 4 years of age.Materials and Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent surgery for intermittent exotropia and had follow-up durations longer than 2 years were recruited. The patients were classified according to age at surgery—the patients of group 1 had undergone surgery before 4 years of age and those of group 2 at or after 4 years of age. Motor success was defined by exodeviation < 10 prism diopters (PD) and esodeviation < 5 PD at distance at 2 years postoperatively. Stereoacuity was considered as success at a value ≤ 60 arc seconds. The motor and sensory success rates as well as the surgical complications were compared.Results: Of the 73 patients, 36 were allocated to group 1 and 37 to group 2. At 2 years after surgery, 13 of the 36 (36.1%) patients in group 1 and 12 of the 37 (32.4%) in group 2 had achieved successful alignment; 32 (88.9%) patients in group 1 and 35 (94.6%) in group 2 achieved normal stereoacuity. No significant differences in the motor or sensory success rates were observed between the two groups (p = 0.46 and 0.32, respectively).Conclusions: The surgical success rates for intermittent exotropia were comparable between the patients operated upon before 4 years of age and those operated upon after 4 years of age. The incidence of postsurgical complications was low and not significantly different between the two study groups.