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Causes

The causes of strabismus are varied. The most frequent are due to:

Malfunction of the muscles that move the eyes, so that one pulls more than the others.
Optical or refractive defects, usually hyperopia and / or astigmatism.

Treatment

Strabismus is treated according to its cause, although the following may often be used:

Use of eyeglasses for the optical correction of a defect.
Use of an occlusion patch to cover the good eye, to force the lazy eye to see.
Surgery of the external eye muscles to obtain ocular parallelism.

The various alternatives should be evaluated by an ophthalmologist.

Strabismus Surgery

Strabismus surgery improves the quality of vision... and the persons own image.

Strabismus is the loss of alignment of the eyes. As a result, both eyes are not able to look simultaneously at the same object, affecting binocular vision or stereovision.

In toddlers, the persistence of this situation often results in that, in order to avoid double vision, one eye will gradually lose its vision. Becoming in this way a “lazy eye” or amblyopic eye; in other words, the eye does not develop its full visual potential. It is said that the eye “did not learn to see” as well as the other. However, it is normal for babies, until approximately 3-4 months old, to divert the eyes inward, getting “cross-eyed” occasionally, without this indicating any possibility of future problems.

Early detection

The best way to detect strabismus is to look directly into the eyes of the child. You may use a flashlight and see if the reflected light is focused on the eyes.

If you observe that your baby commonly keeps his or her eyes diverted, consult a pediatrician. It is normal for parents to observe an apparent deviation of the eyes during their children’s first years of life. This is often due to the shape of the eyelids (epicanthus), which is of no consequence; and is known as pseudostrabismus.

Other warning signs, in addition to the lack of parallelism of the eyes, may be odd positions of the head to look at objects. If a child older than 6 months presents a sudden eye deviation, you should promptly consult your pediatrician or ophthalmologist.