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Aligning eyes: straightening out strabismus - includes related article
FDA Consumer , Nov, 1991 by Dixie Farley
"Why do you have that patch on? Did your eye fall out?" Kindergartner Kimberly
May answered the jeer with a shrug. In 1974, it was Kim`s first day of school in
Gaithersburg, Md., and she and the boy harassing her were waiting with other children
for the building to open. Standing nearby, Kim`s 7-year-old brother Erik replied
with gusto: "You dumb thing. She`s got amblyopia, and she needs the eye patch so
she can see better. So there."
Although Erik couldn`t explain how Kim`s amblhopia (decreased vision) resulted
from strabismus (eye misalignment), he defended his sister with the few terms and
facts he`d overheard at home. And although Kim couldn`t find comfort in knowing
that many other youngsters wear eye patches for amblyopia, she took heart from her
brother`s support.
Strabismus affects approximately 4 percent of U.S. children under age 6. Amblyopia
occurs in about 2 percent of the general population.
Anne May, a registered nurse, discussed her daughter`s condition with the teacher,
emphasizing that strabismus would not hamper Kim`s ability to do class work. With
agreement from Kim and her teacher, May also spoke to the class.
"I told them one eye sometimes is weak but can often be strengthened by patching,"
May says. "We took the patch off to show them her eye was OK under there. After
that, there were only one or two remarks, from students absent that day."
In Kim, strabismus occurred as crossed eyes. In others, it may manifest as eyes
that turn out, up or down. Its name can be traced to the Greek word strabismos,
to look obliquely or with unstraight eyes; some use the terms "squint" and "lazy
eye." Strabismus can disable sight in one eye, yet leave the other with 20/20 vision.
Strabismus can be acquired from diverse causes at any age. There are more than a
dozen variations. (See accompanying article.)
Sight: A Team Effort
Healthy eyes move together to send similar images along the optic nerve to the
brain for fusion into a single 3-dimensional picture at the brain-vision junction,
or visual cortex. Toward this end, six muscles (see illustration) attached to the
outside of each eye contract and relax to move the eyes in perfect synchronization,
permitting fusion, or binocular vision, across a large area of the visual field.
Strabismic eyes, on the other hand, do not move in unison. A muscle may pull
too weakly or too strongly against its opposing muscle, creating an imbalance that
causes one eye to drift from parallel alignment with its mate; more than one pair
of muscles may be imbalanced.
Since each eye fixates on an object at a different point in space, the images
received by the brain are dissimilar. The brain is unable to fuse the dissimilar
images, resulting in double vision, which can be very disturbing. To avoid this
disturbance, the brain may suppress vision in the deviating eye, allowing clear
sight to develop solely in the straight eye. Decreased vision in the suppressed
eye is called amblyopia. Prolonged amblyopia causes a loss in 3-dimensional viewing
and depth perception.
The "squint" or turn usually is constant but may be intermittent and may occur
in only one eye or alternate between the two eyes. Vision in people with alternating
strabismus generally remains good i each eye individually.
While strabismus clearly stems from muscle imbalance, the causes of such imbalance
are many and are not all completely understood.
"There`s a strong genetic influence, but there are also many anatomic and neuromuscular
reasons," says John F. O`Neill, M.D., an ophthalmologist (a physician who specializes
in eye disease) and director of the Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus Service
at Georgetown University`s Center for Sight in Washington, D.C. "One group of children
may have eyes that turn, usually inward, from the day they are born. Another group
may have perfectly healthy and straight eyes their first few years of life. However,
as these children mature and start focusing more carefully on objects, the effort
to see clearly causes their eyes to cross. Another group of children with neurologic
conditions, such as cerebral palsy, not only may have poor movement of their arms
and legs, but the eye muscle system is affected as well."
Strabismus can be associated with many other conditions that cause poor vision
in one or both eyes--for example, cataract, Down syndrome, thyroid disese, eye tumor,
damage to the fetal central nervous system from toxoplasmosis (a parasitic infection
that can pass from the mother during pregnancy), damage to a nerve supplying the
eye muscle (perhaps from birth trauma), or eye disuse due to a high refractive error
(such as extreme farsightedness) or different refractive errors in each eye (such
as nearsightedness in one eye and farsightedness in the other).
Is It Strabismus?
Maybe not. Some children have facial features that make the eyes look crossed
when they aren`t, and some normal newborns have a temporary outward drift.