AOA体育平台

Prism lenses

These are special lenses that can bend the light entering the eye to reduce the eye's misdirection. They are often very helpful for people with double vision and relatively small squints, and can completely 鈥榗ure鈥� the double vision, although the glasses will continue to need to be worn.

Vision therapy or orthoptic exercises

Some types of strabismus such as convergence insufficiency (double vision for close-up reading) can be improved with exercises to be done at home.

Your ophthalmologist will decide on the most appropriate type of vision therapy or orthoptic exercises treatment and the orthoptist will usually supervise these and give you follow-up appointments.

Botox injections

The doctor may prescribe Botox (botulinum toxin) injections to weaken the overacting eye muscle and cause the eye to turn back towards a normal position. These injections are performed at AOA体育平台 Eye Centre, usually just with local anaesthetic eye drops, as an outpatient procedure.

Sometimes the treatment is a one-off to assess whether you would benefit from surgery or if only a temporary benefit is needed (as it usually wears off over a few months), sometimes it is repeated for longer-term treatment.

Medications

Some types of strabismus benefit from medical treatment, such as for those with double vision due to thyroid eye disease or myasthenia gravis, both autoimmune diseases.

Your ophthalmologist will often co-manage your condition with another specialist, such as an endocrinologist for thyroid problems or a neurologist for myasthenia.

Squint surgery

Squint surgery repositions the muscles around the eyeball to make the misdirected eye point in the same direction as the other eye.

It is usually performed under general anaesthetic at AOA体育平台 but doesn鈥檛 need an overnight stay as you will be able to go home a few hours after surgery (with someone escorting you).

Squint surgery usually takes 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

During the procedure, the lining of the eyeball (the conjunctiva) is opened up slightly to enable the surgeon to gain access to the muscles that hold the eyeball in place. The muscle(s) may be weakened or tightened by moving where they are inserted into the eyeball. Adults often have surgery with adjustable stitches, which means when you wake up the surgeon can test the eye position and, if needed, can alter the eye position (numbing the eye with local anaesthetic eye drops) to make the alignment perfect.

This is relatively minor surgery, and recovery time is quick 鈥� the eye(s) feel quite scratchy for a day or two and while a week off work is often recommended, you are able to do most things including reading/screens the day after surgery. The white of the eye is often red for some weeks after the operation, but usually settles so that no one can tell you have had surgery.

Generally, one follow-up appointment is needed with the orthoptist and ophthalmologist.

Glasses or contact lenses

If your child has refractive errors that are causing their strabismus, often long-sightedness, corrective lenses may help their eyes to straighten, as they鈥檒l need to make less effort to focus.

If your child鈥檚 strabismus is caused by refractive errors, this may be the only treatment they鈥檒l need. However, they鈥檒l need to continue using corrective lenses moving forward.

Eye patches or Atropine eye drops

If your child鈥檚 strabismus causes a lazy eye (by which we mean even with glasses the eyesight is still not normal in one eye as the brain is suppressing this eye), placing a patch over the other eye can force the connections between the lazy eye and the brain to rebuild.

Your child would usually wear the eye patch for two to six hours per day until the lazy eye begins to work again.

This is not an invasive form of treatment but it is important to monitor the vision and the orthoptist will usually do this.

An alternative to patching is Atropine eye drops (generally used twice a week in the better eye to slightly blur it) and this would be prescribed by the ophthalmologist with orthoptic follow up to determine when to stop treatment.

Only adults (over age of 18) with strabismus are treated by the consultants at AOA体育平台 Eye Centre. Children who have been assessed by our specialist consultants are treated elsewhere.