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The primary goal of treatment is to preserve or restore as much visual function as possible. Treatments vary, depending on the type and cause of strabismus. Glasses are used to correct vision in the weaker eye. Patches are worn over the preferred eye to force the use of the weaker or suppressed eye. Eye drops are used to temporarily blur the vision of the preferred eye. Exercises may be prescribed to strengthen specific eye muscles.

Forcing a child to use the weaker eye can improve sight by reinforcing the connection between the eye and the brain.Surgery to tighten or loosen specific eye muscles is usually required to realign the eyes. This operation is typically done under general anesthesia and may involve one or both eyes. Occasionally alignment is not achieved with the first surgery and additional surgery is needed.

Any concerns about a child’s ability to see or about the alignment of his or her eyes should be raised with your ophthalmologist as soon as possible. Constant strabismus at any age or intermittent strabismus that persists beyond 3 months of age usually needs prompt referral to an ophthalmologist.

Adults who develop double vision or other signs of strabismus should contact their ophthalmologist for further evaluation.

Treatment for strabismus should begin as soon after diagnosis as possible. In general, the younger the child is when treatment for strabismus begins, the better the chances are of correcting the problem.

Treatment should also address amblyopia (lazy eye) or other vision problems to help normal vision develop. If amblyopia has developed, aligning the eyes will not reverse it.

Early treatment is important to correct strabismus. But time is even more critical with amblyopia. Amblyopia can damage a child’s vision quickly and permanently. After about age 7 to 10 years, no treatment can completely correct poor vision caused by amblyopia. For more information, see the topic Amblyopia.

Treatment for strabismus may include glasses, patches, drug treatments, eye exercises, botulinum toxin, or surgery.

Botulinum Toxin:Botulinum toxin (such as Botox) is a drug that temporarily prevents contraction of a muscle for several months at a time. This causes the muscle to relax, which allows the opposing muscle to change the eye’s position. It is sometimes used as a supplemental treatment when surgery does not entirely correct the misalignment of the eyes. It is a controversial treatment, though, because it may require many injections, results are not always predictable, and it may create other vision problems and simply delay further surgery.

Eye exercises:Exercises may be used in addition to other treatments, such as surgery. But eye exercises alone are not helpful in most cases of strabismus.

Drug treatments:The doctor may prescribe certain drugs, usually in the form of eyedrops , as part of the treatment. Atropine and miotics (such as echothiophate iodide) affect muscles in the eye that control the pupil and the eye’s ability to focus. Miotics may be used when strabismus is caused by problems in focusing the eyes. Atropine is sometimes used as an alternative to patching to help treat poor vision (amblyopia) in one eye by blurring the vision in the good eye beyond that of the weaker eye and forcing the child to use the weaker eye.

Eye patches:This is primarily a treatment for amblyopia (lazy eye), which may be either the result of strabismus or its cause. The stronger eye is covered with a patch to force the child to use the weaker eye. It is important to carefully follow instructions for wearing an eye patch and to not have a child wear a patch longer than your doctor recommends because excessive use of a patch can cause amblyopia in the initially stronger eye. For more information on wearing an eye patch.

Glasses:If the eyes are only slightly misaligned, wearing glasses can sometimes correct strabismus. Some children may need to wear bifocals or special lenses called prisms. Along with wearing glasses, they may need to use eyedrops for a while.

It can be normally agreed that surgical cure of convergent strabismus ought to be withheld right up until all other a lesser amount of traumatic approaches have proved ineffectual. You can find 4 categories of nonsurgical therapy.

1 is psychiatric. As well usually psychiatric difficulties within the causation of convergent strabismus are either overlooked or unrecognized.

A further could be the appropriate employment of optical equipment. For illustration, spectacle lenses to remove the need to have for excessive accommodation with its connected convergence excess, along with the employment of prisms within the lenses to permit the two eyes to determine as being a unit even nevertheless they may possibly not be correctly anatomically oriented.

An additional type of cure is orthoptics, the usage of workout routines and instead complicated optical gear inside a laboratory to train the patient in coordination among the two eyes.

Medication with prescription drugs is centered within the reality that specific prescriptions lessen the work required for accommodation (a lot as eye-glasses do) and so decrease the stimulus toward convergence which may well possibly are likely toward the advancement of convergent strabismus.