Treatment for adult strabismus is usually initiated with the use of glasses or contact lenses to correct vision difficulties that may be causing or aggravating the problem. However, when this type of treatment is not enough, the ophthalmologist may recommend doing eye exercises once a week in the hospital, and daily at home, to improve coordination of the muscles and help focus the objects better.
In the more severe cases, where it is not possible to correct strabismus only with the use of eyeglasses and eye exercises, it may be necessary to use surgery to balance the eye muscles and correct misalignment.
What causes
Strabismus can be caused by defects in 3 different places:
- In the muscles that move the eyes;
- In the nerves that transmit information from the brain to the muscles to move;
- In the portion of the brain that commands the movement of the eyes.
Therefore, strabismus may appear in the child, when the problem is related to the lack of development of one of these places, which often happens in cases of Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, for example or in the adult, due to problems such as Accident Cerebral Vascular, head trauma, or even a bump in the eye.
Strabismus can be of 3 types, divergent strabismus, when the deviation of the eye is outward, ie towards the side of the face, convergent strabismus, when the eye is diverted towards the nose, or vertical strabismus, if the eye is shifted up or down.
What is surgery?
Generally, surgery for strabismus is done on the operative block with general anesthesia, so the doctor can make small cuts on the eye muscles to balance the forces and align the eye.
In most cases, this surgery does not cause scarring and recovery is relatively rapid. See when to have surgery for strabismus and what the risks are.
How To Correct Strabismus With Exercise
A good exercise that helps coordinate eye muscles and improve strabismus consists of:
- Place a finger stretched about 30 cm from the nose;
- Place one finger of the other hand between the nose and the stretched finger;
- Look at the nearest finger and focus on that finger until you notice the finger that is farthest in duplicate;
- Move the finger that is closer, slowly between the nose and the finger farther away, trying to always focus on the nearest finger to observe the finger that is farthest duplicated;
This exercise should be repeated 2 to 3 minutes every day, but your ophthalmologist may also advise other exercises to complete the treatment at home.
When treatment is not done properly in childhood, the person may develop amblyopia, which is a vision problem where the affected eye usually sees less than the other eye, because the brain creates a mechanism to ignore the image other than comes through this eye.
Therefore, treatment should be started in the baby soon after the diagnosis of the problem, by placing an eye patch on the healthy eye, in order to force the brain to use only the eye that is misaligned and to develop the muscles on that side . See more about treatment for children's strabismus.
