Question
You don't have too much info regarding babies.
My son is 14 months old and has had one eye noticable turn outward since he was very
small. I finally was able to get him to an optometrist as our family doctor could not
notice it. Well the optometrist did notice that both eyes turn out slightly. He said to wait
until he was older to put drops in his eyes and then he will see what is going on behind
his eyes. He will try this in 3 months time. My question concerns this treatment. Is this
normal? I know that I am just a worried mother (my oldest daughter also has "lazy eye"
and being patched) or could this treatment lead to something worse?
Thanks alot...
(Jane)
Answer:
Dear Jane,
The questions are, what is the cause of the divergent squint and how often does the eye
turn outward. Most likely your son has intermittent exotropia, in which case one eye
would tend to turn outward especially when he is tired. These cases usually do not have a
lazy eye and only need surgery when the squint occurs 10% - 30% of the time each day.
There may be another cause for the divergent squint, however. One eye may be more
hypermetropic (=need for plus glasses) than the other, get amblyopic (lazy) for that
reason and turn outward. There may well be another, rarer, reason. In any case the idea
to put drops in the eyes and measure the theoretical glasses strenght is a good idea. Please
let me know what the optometrist finds.
Yours truly,
(Herb Simonsz, MD, PhD)
Note: To contact contributors to this page, replace [AT] in the e-mail address by @.