Has anyone here had surgery to correct strabismus?!
Question: if so, was it effective and did it hurt? I'm wondering if i should get the surgery since i had strabismus my whole life and i am soon turning 18. or are there any alternatives to straighten my eye
Answers: if so, was it effective and did it hurt? I'm wondering if i should get the surgery since i had strabismus my whole life and i am soon turning 18. or are there any alternatives to straighten my eye
Strabismus? Am assuming that you have eyes that are 'crossed'. This is called esotropia. If an eye is 'out' that would be called exotropia.
In patients with esotropia, there are a few things one needs to rule out before 'fixing' the crossed eyes. For instance, is there a retinal problem that has caused traction on the macula and moved it to the side so that the eyes don't appear to be aligned, but the vision IS. If you moved the eye surgically, the person would have double vision and would eventually 'correct' it slowly back to the original 'wrong' looking gaze.
Are you really farsighted? In people that are farsighted, or hyperopes, the lens system of the eyes is weak. Light is focused behind the eye rather that onto the retina. The lens system should bend the light so that if focuses on the center of the retina, the macula. If the lens system is too strong, the light rays bend too much and focus in front of the retina. These people are nearsighted.
For farsighted people, they have to bend the lens in their eyes to make them more powerful. This focuses the light onto the retina. But it takes work. Most people have to 'work' to move the focal point from far away to a reading distance. This amount of work, this bending of the lens is also associated with other things such as the pupil getting smaller and the eyes moving inward to gaze at the book or object up close.
If you are farsighted enough, or badly enough or have really 'weak' eyes, you work hard to see at distance clearly. In doing so your brain thinks you are trying to see up close. So it sends the normal messages to constrict the pupil and to move the eyes inward. This person looks cross eyed when seeing clearly at a distance. But if an optometrist puts the right glasses in front of those eyes, they'll straighten out. Surgery is contraindicated in these people. It won't work without correcting the farsightedness first. Accomodative esotropia is not a surgical condition (unless you consider refractive surgery the treatment).
But there are people who just have crossed eyes. The right eye looks to the left, the left eye looks to the right. Actually one eye is used to see with and the other eye is crossed over and isn't used to see. It is functionally 'blind' when the fixating eye is being used. Some people get a lazy eye that doesn't learn to see well. Other people have both eyes seeing very well when looking in that specific direction.
So when an exotrope is looking with one eye, the other eye has a suppression scotoma or blind spot. Otherwise they'd see double. When having surgery, the surgeon needs to move the lateral muscles (the medial rectus and the lateral rectus muscles) to straighten an eye. And that eye has to be moved beyond the mid line. If it's not, then the suppression scotoma will be in use when trying to see straight ahead and the eye will drift back in and cross again. But if it is beyond the midline, that scotoma is outside the visual axis and the operated eye will fix 'with' the normal eye and the eyes will straighten and remain that way.
The functional adaptations to strabismus surgery are related to the 'why' of the strabismus. What is the cause? Is there a 'weak' muscle? Is there a nerve problem or palsy? Is there a medical problem causing a muscle weakness? Are there associated diseases such as diabetes, thyroid, sarcoidosis, luetic disease, Multiple Sclerosis, TB, sinus problems, vascular abnormalities, systemic vasculitis or collagen vascular diseases....
There's more to it than just moving this eye that way.
I don't have that, but I have seen some shows on TLC/Discovery/Discovery Health... There was a girl with severe strabismus, and she got a series of operations and had it corrected. It looks PERFECT afterwards, and it seems like a pretty effective and 'easy going' procedure. Hope I helped =)
Depending on the severity of your case, it would be very beneficial. I work at a clinic where we do eye surgeries. There are a lot of people out there who do get this done and have great success. It's a hard one because you don't want to mess with something that is functional, but it sure would be nice to be fixed at the same time. Just do some researching before you make up your mind. Look for a surgeon that has done surgeries for quite a few years. You don't want to be one of the first hundred or so. I wish you luck in your decision making.