Esotropia is a form of strabismus in which one or both eyes turns inward. The condition can be constantly present, or occur intermittently, and can give the affected individual a "cross-eyed" appearance. It is the opposite of exotropia and usually involves more severe axis deviation than esophoria. Esotropia is sometimes erroneously called "lazy eye", which describes the condition of amblyopia; a reduction in vision of one or both eyes that is not the result of any pathology of the eye and cannot be resolved by the use of corrective lenses. Amblyopia can, however, arise as a result of esotropia occurring in childhood: In order to relieve symptoms of diplopia or double vision, the child's brain will ignore or "suppress" the image from the esotropic eye, which when allowed to continue untreated will lead to the development of amblyopia. Treatment options for esotropia include glasses to correct refractive errors, the use of prisms and/or orthoptic exercises and/or eye muscle surgery. The term is from Greek eso meaning "inward" and trope meaning "a turning".
Strabismus is a condition in which the eyes do not properly align with each other when looking at an object. The eye that is focused on an object can alternate. The condition may be present occasionally or constantly. If present during a large part of childhood, it may result in amblyopia or lazy eyes and loss of depth perception. If onset is during adulthood, it is more likely to result in double vision.
An eye examination is a series of tests performed to assess vision and ability to focus on and discern objects. It also includes other tests and examinations pertaining to the eyes. Eye examinations are primarily performed by an optometrist, ophthalmologist, or an orthoptist. Health care professionals often recommend that all people should have periodic and thorough eye examinations as part of routine primary care, especially since many eye diseases are asymptomatic.
Retinoscopy (Ret) is a technique to obtain an objective measurement of the refractive error of a patient's eyes. The examiner uses a retinoscope to shine light into the patient's eye and observes the reflection (reflex) off the patient's retina. While moving the streak or spot of light across the pupil the examiner observes the relative movement of the reflex or manually places lenses over the eye to "neutralize" the reflex.
Exotropia is a form of strabismus where the eyes are deviated outward. It is the opposite of esotropia and usually involves more severe axis deviation than exophoria. People with exotropia often experience crossed diplopia. Intermittent exotropia is a fairly common condition. "Sensory exotropia" occurs in the presence of poor vision in one eye. Infantile exotropia is seen during the first year of life, and is less common than "essential exotropia" which usually becomes apparent several years later.
Sixth nerve palsy, or abducens nerve palsy, is a disorder associated with dysfunction of cranial nerve VI, which is responsible for causing contraction of the lateral rectus muscle to abduct the eye. The inability of an eye to turn outward, results in a convergent strabismus or esotropia of which the primary symptom is diplopia in which the two images appear side-by-side. Thus, the diplopia is horizontal and worse in the distance. Diplopia is also increased on looking to the affected side and is partly caused by overaction of the medial rectus on the unaffected side as it tries to provide the extra innervation to the affected lateral rectus. These two muscles are synergists or "yoke muscles" as both attempt to move the eye over to the left or right. The condition is commonly unilateral but can also occur bilaterally.
The Worth Four Light Test, also known as the Worth's Four Dot test or W4LT, is a clinical test mainly used for assessing a patient's degree of binocular vision and binocular single vision. Binocular vision involves an image being projected by each eye simultaneously into an area in space and being fused into a single image. The Worth Four Light Test is also used in detection of suppression of either the right or left eye. Suppression occurs during binocular vision when the brain does not process the information received from either of the eyes. This is a common adaptation to strabismus, amblyopia and aniseikonia.
In the fields of optometry and ophthalmology, the Hirschberg test, also Hirschberg corneal reflex test, is a screening test that can be used to assess whether a person has strabismus.
Hypertropia is a condition of misalignment of the eyes (strabismus), whereby the visual axis of one eye is higher than the fellow fixating eye. Hypotropia is the similar condition, focus being on the eye with the visual axis lower than the fellow fixating eye. Dissociated vertical deviation is a special type of hypertropia leading to slow upward drift of one or rarely both eyes, usually when the patient is inattentive.
A cover test or cover-uncover test is an objective determination of the presence and amount of ocular deviation. It is typically performed by orthoptists, ophthalmologists and optometrists during eye examinations.
Heterophoria is an eye condition in which the directions that the eyes are pointing at rest position, when not performing binocular fusion, are not the same as each other, or, "not straight". This condition can be esophoria, where the eyes tend to cross inward in the absence of fusion; exophoria, in which they diverge; or hyperphoria, in which one eye points up or down relative to the other. Phorias are known as 'latent squint' because the tendency of the eyes to deviate is kept latent by fusion. A person with two normal eyes has single vision (usually) because of the combined use of the sensory and motor systems. The motor system acts to point both eyes at the target of interest; any offset is detected visually. Heterophoria only occurs during dissociation of the left eye and right eye, when fusion of the eyes is absent. If you cover one eye you remove the sensory information about the eye's position in the orbit. Without this, there is no stimulus to binocular fusion, and the eye will move to a position of "rest". The difference between this position, and where it would be were the eye uncovered, is the heterophoria. The opposite of heterophoria, where the eyes are straight when relaxed and not fusing, is called orthophoria.
Infantile esotropia is an ocular condition of early onset in which one or either eye turns inward. It is a specific sub-type of esotropia and has been a subject of much debate amongst ophthalmologists with regard to its naming, diagnostic features, and treatment.
Dissociated vertical deviation (DVD) is an eye condition which occurs in association with a squint, typically infantile esotropia. The exact cause is unknown, although it is logical to assume it is from faulty innervation of eye muscles.
Eye care professionals use prism correction as a component of some eyeglass prescriptions. A lens which includes some amount of prism correction will displace the viewed image horizontally, vertically, or a combination of both directions. The most common application for this is the treatment of strabismus. By moving the image in front of the deviated eye, double vision can be avoided and comfortable binocular vision can be achieved. Other applications include yoked prism where the image is shifted an equal amount in each eye. This is useful when someone has a visual field defect on the same side of each eye. Individuals with nystagmus, Duane's retraction syndrome, 4th Nerve Palsy, and other eye movement disorders experience an improvement in their symptoms when they turn or tilt their head. Yoked prism can move the image away from primary gaze without the need for a constant head tilt or turn.
Cyclotropia is a form of strabismus in which, compared to the correct positioning of the eyes, there is a torsion of one eye about the eye's visual axis. Consequently, the visual fields of the two eyes appear tilted relative to each other. The corresponding latent condition – a condition in which torsion occurs only in the absence of appropriate visual stimuli – is called cyclophoria.
The Maddox rod test can be used to subjectively detect and measure a latent, manifest, horizontal or vertical strabismus for near and distance. The test is based on the principle of diplopic projection. Dissociation of the deviation is brought about by presenting a red line image to one eye and a white light to the other, while prisms are used to superimpose these and effectively measure the angle of deviation. The strength of the prism is increased until the streak of the light passes through the centre of the prism, as the strength of the prism indicates the amount of deviation present. The Maddox rod is a handheld instrument composed of red parallel plano convex cylinder lens, which refracts light rays so that a point source of light is seen as a line or streak of light. Due to the optical properties, the streak of light is seen perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder.
Bagolini striated glasses test, or BSGT, is a subjective clinical test to detect the presence or extent of binocular functions and is generally performed by an optometrist or orthoptist or ophthalmologist. It is mainly used in strabismus clinics. Through this test, suppression, microtropia, diplopia and manifest deviations can be noted. However this test should always be used in conjunction with other clinical tests, such as Worth 4 dot test, Cover test, Prism cover test and Maddox rod to come to a diagnosis.
The prism fusion range (PFR) or fusional vergence amplitude is a clinical eye test performed by orthoptists, optometrists, and ophthalmologists to assess motor fusion, specifically the extent to which a patient can maintain binocular single vision (BSV) in the presence of increasing vergence demands. Motor fusion is largely accounted to amplitudes of fusional vergences and relative fusional vergences. Fusional vergence is the maximum vergence movement enabling BSV and the limit is at the point of diplopia. Relative fusional vergence is the maximum vergence movement enabling a patient to see a comfortable clear image and the limit is represented by the first point of blur. These motor fusion functions should fall within average values so that BSV can be comfortably achieved. Excessive stress on the vergence system or inability to converge or diverge adequately can lead to asthenopic symptoms, which generally result from decompensation of latent deviations (heterophoria) or loss of control of ocular misalignments. Motor anomalies can be managed in various ways, however, in order to commence treatment, motor fusion testing such as the PFR is required.
The Maddox Wing is an instrument utilized by ophthalmologists, orthoptists and optometrists in the measurement of strabismus. It is a quantitative and subjective method of measuring the size of a strabismic deviation by dissociation of the eyes brought about by two septa which are placed in such a way as to present fields to either eye separated by a diaphragm at the centre. The right eye sees a red and white arrow, each of which point to a scale with numbers seen by the left eye; the red arrow points to the vertical red scale and the white arrow points to the horizontal white scale. A third arrow located to the right and below the horizontal white scale is used to measure torsion
The FourPrism Dioptre Reflex Test is an objective, non-dissociative test used to prove the alignment of both eyes by assessing motor fusion. Through the use of a 4 dioptre base out prism, diplopia is induced which is the driving force for the eyes to change fixation and therefore re-gain bifoveal fixation meaning, they overcome that amount of power.
