Long-term postoperative stability in infantile esotropia

The purpose of this paper is to present the ocular motility status of a group of patients with infantile esotropia who underwent surgery before 2 years of age and were followed for a minimum period of 4 years until discharge from Ophthalmology and Orthoptic review. This retrospective review included 40 children with a diagnosis of infantile esotropia. There were 22 females and 18 males. The children were identified from surgical records between 1987 and 1992. Each child had surgery before the age of 2 years at an average age of 17 months (7 months to 22 months). Many patients (60%) achieved a small-angle (less than 20 prism dioptres), cosmetically acceptable strabismus. Nine patients (22.5%) achieved binocular vision postoperatively, five with microtropia, one with intermittent exotropia and three with bifoveal exophoria. The bifoveal patients did not exhibit high grade stereopsis, which may relate to the time of onset of infantile esotropia when development of cortical stereopsis is critical. Persistent amblyopia postoperatively was significantly associated with a poorer outcome and lack of binocular function.