Need tips on strabismus (lazy eye) with a two year old?

My little girl just went through 6 weeks of eye patching, now she is wearing glasses and still eye patching. I believe the next step is surgery. What is everyones experiences with this? Is there a good success rate? Or do kids undergo this therapy for many years? Any one with anything to say about this, please do enlighten me! Need tips on strabismus (lazy eye) with a two year old?
Hi, my daughter is 22 months and will go in for surgery for strabismus in a week. The question of surgery vs glasses fully depends on whether the glasses are helping with her alignment. If she is farsighted and the glasses are correcting enough that her eyes don't turn in or out, then surgery should not be done. However, if the glasses and patching are not helping, then yes, surgery is often the best next step.





Basically strabismus can be caused by a couple of different things, including uncorrected prescription problems where the eyes cross in order to better focus (accomodative) or it can be due to overactive eye muscles. In some cases (as is the case with my daughter), it can be a combination of the two. It's only in the case of overstrong muscles that the surgery should be done. As an aside, strabismus is not the same as lazy eye, but often the two are associated. When the eyes don't line up (strabismus) then the brain will often turn off the input from one of the eyes so it doesn't see double (lazy eye). But they don't always go together - my daughter has strabismus but has not yet developed lazy eye - that's one of the reasons we're doing the surgery and glasses - to try to minimize the chance of lazy eye.





The surgery is relatively successful, but it is not as exact as other eye surgeries, such as laser surgery (our ophthalmologist's words). About 15-20% of kids who have the surgery will end up needing another surgery, sometimes not for years later. Some of those will always have problems with eyes not being aligned. If your child has a combination of muscle and focusing problems, then the surgery will not remove the need for glasses. Still, it can be very effective.





I'm putting a bunch of links you may want to check out. One is my blog post about all the questions I asked our doctor. One is a site about a family's experience with strabismus, and the last is a site from Prevent Blindness America that is an online forum with a topic for parents whose children have had strabismus surgery.





Please feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk about this. I don't have the answers, but I'm going through it too right now.Need tips on strabismus (lazy eye) with a two year old?
nliz, please feel free to send me an email any time - ann @ shinypebble . com. I hope all is going well with your daughter. Mine had her surgery 2 1/2 weeks ago and is recovering well. We have an appointment in a week to evaluate how successful it was, but her eyes are so much straighter now. Report Abuse

My son had lazy eye. We did drops instead of a patch because he would not keep eye patches on. He's been wearing glasses since he was twenty months old. Part of his problem was that the vision was stronger in one eye than the other, so one eye was turning in. Once the vision was even in both eyes, he had strabismus surgery at 3 1/2 years old. He is 5 1/2 now, and so far so good. He has an appointment with the ophthalmologist this week, but I really don't have any worries as his eyes were still aligned properly at his last check up. It was a little upsetting to him once his vision cleared after the surgery, and he saw there was blood in his eyes. That went away after several days. Vision should be back partially by the next day, completely by the third day if I remember correctly.
I was born with Bilateral Colamboma. And have lazy eye in both of my eyes. I actually had my first surgery at 18 months, then from there I did 6 years (yes a long time) of eye patching. Being partially blind in my left eye, the patching actually helped me gain a lot of vision. From there I went onto glasses. When I was three doctors had proposed another surgery to correct the lazy eye, but they also said, and this is really is important, that children of such a young age grow a lot. That includes their eyes, which change a lot when they are young. You can get corrective surgery that will fix it for now, but the eye may continue growing, and you may have to get surgery multiple times over the next 10-12 years, which is very hard on the child. My parents decided to wait, and as I got older, and my eyes stopped changing so much, the lazy eye began to correct itself, and at 14, I got one final surgery to correct it, and hopefully my eyes won't change and more. Once I was done with patching at age 6, I went onto glasses, and that was it. i visited a specialist every 6-8 months, just to make sure everything was oaky, but I don't think it is necessary to have surgery when you are so young, unless your child really needs it, but it is ultimaltly up to the parent.





Hope I helped, and please feel free to e mail me if you have any more question, at hiitsmady@yahoo.com





Cheers,


Madelyn
Success rate is high!





I'm 20 years old and had severe strabismus in both eyes in addition to a neurological vision disorder which causes monocular vision and severely limited depth perception. I still have the vision disorder, as this is something that they are unable to correct; however, you cannot even tell that I once had severe strabismus in both eyes.I went through YEARS of patching, and It did take multiple surgeries, I had a total of 4; however, they are as close to perfect as they can get. These took place between 18-36 months... so relatively speaking, going on 20 years ago. Technology and knowledge of strabismus has since then increased dramatically!











Good luck!
try taking her to another i doctor