Strabismus is a turned eye. The most common type of eye turn is an esotropia – one eye is turned inwards. Exotropia is an outwards eye turn. In some cases there may also be a vertical component to the eye turn where it turns up or down as well.
Vision therapy is an effective option for treating strabismus. In a patient with strabismus from a young age, the turned eye typically fails to develop normal fixation, eye-tracking, focusing and convergence abilities and falls into a deeper state of disuse, which discourages any improvement in the eye turn. This is why in many cases, surgical intervention only provides a cosmetic fix rather than a functional visual improvement. In other words, following surgery, the eye is pointing in the right spot but is not being used. Since the eye is not being used many patients will find the eye returns to the turned position over time thus necessitating further surgeries. Vision therapy for strabismus first aims to develop these lacking skills in the turned eye. Then we subsequently work on teaching the patient how to begin to use the two eyes together once they have equal visual skills in the two eyes. A functional visual improvement can be achieved with vision therapy and those skills can be retained ongoing.
Advance Vision Therapy is here to help you with your strabismus.
