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Strabismus

Causes and symptoms of strabismus


What is strabismus?

Strabismus can be recognized visually. It manifests itself as a deviation from the Central axis of one or both eyes. The disease is caused by uncoordinated work of the eye muscles. In the normal position of the eyes are focused on one thing, and the optic nerve, comparing the two images, creates a single three-dimensional image. When strabismus is violated, the focusing of the eyes on the object in question, and, as a result of interpretation of two images one does not occur. In this case, to avoid double vision, the nervous system analyzes the signal of a healthy eye and does not take into account the signal mowing.


Causes of strabismus

According to statistics, strabismus suffers one of fifty children. As a rule, the disease develops in children during the formation of the coordinated work of the muscles of both eyes. Malfunctions of the eye muscles occur in a child two to five years, together with visual impairments such as myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.

To strabismus cause brain disease, head injury, mental impairment, eye surgery.

Also strabismus can begin to progress after a strong fright, stress or result of infectious diseases: influenza, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles.


Symptoms of strabismus

Distinguish between friendly and paralytic forms of strabismus.

Friendly mowing at the right, then the left eye, the degree of deviation from the Central axis about the same. Most often the disease is inherited, occurs mainly in children and is associated with specific features of the device eye.

In the case of paralytic strabismus squints healthy eyes. In a situation when movement of the patient eye is complicated due to the atrophy of one of the eye muscles, the second has to do the work of both eyes, leaning at a greater angle. Causes are damage to the motor muscles of the eye or disease of the visual-neural pathways.

Is convergent, divergent and vertical strabismus. It is characterized by convergent deviation of one eye toward the nose. Often accompanied by farsightedness. Divergent is diagnosed as a deviation of one eye to the temple. Accompanied by nearsightedness. When vertical strabismus, eye turns up or down.

In additionasymmetric functioning of the eyes, strabismus are observed for the symptoms: rotated or inclined head, squinting, double vision. And to complain of double vision are adults. Children have good adaptive ability of the brain is able to compensate for this symptom.

Strabismus treatment

Choosing a method of treatment of strabismus, you should consider many factors: patient age, direction and degree of strabismus, the cause of the disease. Accordingly, methods of treatment may include: wearing glasses, covering one of glasses, exercises for the eye muscles, surgery.

Strabismus in itself does not pass, and its treatment is a long process that takes months, even years. To take action most effectively as soon as a problem is detected. Children's eyes has a great adaptive properties. This means that for a short time squinting eye is partially or completely cease to participate in the vision process, as the brain blocks its signal, and the good eye takes over all functions. This condition is called amblyopia. With the development of amblyopia prescribed glasses with a taped left or right glass. And staklenim leave worse eye. Constant loads will serve as training for the weakened muscles of the eye.

Another important part of the treatment are special exercises for eyes. They also aimed at creating additional load on the muscles of unhealthy eyes.

Strabismus accompany other visual abnormalities, therefore, its treatment should be approached comprehensively, in combination with correction of astigmatism, myopia or hyperopia. To do this, the patient was prescribed glasses for constant wear. Spectacles can restore vision completely. If the visible result is not obtained, resort to surgical intervention. This surgery is most commonly administered to children three to six years. Children under 14 years it is performed under General anesthesia in adolescents and adults under local anesthesia. The operation is performed on the eye muscles and is aimed at restoring balance between muscles that rotate the eyeball within the eye socket. If you operate on both eyes, usually one muscle strengthen, weaken another. Recovery takes from a week to ten days. After the operation is necessary to resume the exercises for the eye muscles, and regularly visit an ophthalmologist.

The ultimate goal of strabismus treatment is to achieve absolute vision without glasses, the symmetric position of the eyes and the formation of a volumetric stereoscopic vision.