The Functional Benefits of Adult Strabismus Treatment

Abstract

Treatment for adult strabismus patients (those above the age of visual maturity, or age 8–9 years) yields many functional benefits. Nonsurgical therapy can address symptoms of diplopia, pain, and asthenopia, as well as torticollis. These modalities include “tincture of time,” eye exercises, lenses, prisms, occlusion, and pharmacologic agents.Strabismus surgery in adults yields many measurable gains, and these can be categorized under: 1) relief of symptoms; 2) regaining of sensory and motor fusion; 3) normalizing the static field of binocular vision; 4) normalizing the field of binocular single vision; 5) improving psychosocial parameters; 6) generating positive cost-benefit analyses. These improvements are possible even when one eye is amblyopic. The cumulative evidence from all of these aspects confirms that adult strabismus surgery is “restorative” or “reconstructive” therapy, and should not be labeled as “cosmetic.”