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What is Strabismus?

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What is Strabismus?

Pic credit: Paediatric Opthalmology

Strabismus or misalignment of the eyes, can have many different causes. The Strabismus can be Comintant or Incomitant.

Pic credit: Orchidia


Comitant Strabismus means that the angle of deviation is the same in all positions of the gaze and the extraocular movements are full.

Forms of comitant strabismus
Pic credit: brainkart

Incomitant Strabismus, means that the angle of deviation is different in different positions of gaze, and the extraocular movements are not full. 

Incomitant Strabismus is a worrisome sign and it is something that you cannot afford to miss, as it may be caused by either restriction or paralysis of the extraocular muscles. 

Pic credit: slideshare


Restriction or trapping or shortening of the muscle can  e due to ocular trauma, orbital inflammation or orbital tumour.

Causes of Strabismus:

It may be caused due to an infantile reason at a young age or accomodative reason.

One can also have them for acquired reasons later on in life and this could be due to head trauma being struck in the head really hard.

It could be from other medical causes such as severe diabetes or something tragic like having a brain tumor or an aneurysm anything that affects your neurological connection to your eye muscles. 

These different forms of acquired strabismus are often called paralytic strabismus as the muscles are paralyzed for some reason. 

For Example: If you have head trauma it usually ends up damaging the fourth cranial nerve which controls one of the superior oblique muscles to the eye it's usually the most commonly damaged in trauma leading to problems with vertical diplopia.

If you have increased intracranial pressure this can push on the sixth cranial nerve which controls the outward movement of the eye and if you can't do that then your eyes are naturally gonna kick inward.

Again if you're somebody who has a long history of uncontrolled diabetes or high blood pressure this can also cause problems with the eye muscles. 

In these cases it's usually transient and does get better on its own within several months. 

Treatments

  • Eye Drops
  • Eye exercise
  • Surgery


Comments

  1. SB Optical6 March 2025 at 12:47

    Strabismus can affect the alignment of the eyes, with both comitant and incomitant forms having distinct causes. It's essential to understand these differences for effective eye care and treatment. Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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