Determinants of postoperative alignment in patients of infantile esotropia

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to study the factors affecting postoperative alignment in patients of infantile esotropia with deviation more than or equal to 30 prism diopter (PD) after 12 weeks of follow-up. Materials and Methods: A total of 23 patients with infantile esotropia were included in this study over a period of 18 months. All the patients were assessed preoperatively and postoperatively at day 1, 3rd week, 6th week, and 12th week. The patients underwent horizontal muscle surgery alone or vertical combined with horizontal muscle surgery wherever required. All surgeries were planned and performed according to W.E. Scott table by a limbus-based approach. Results: Mean age of our study population was 13.36 ± 8.0 years (1.5–30 years). Fifteen (65.2%) patients were hypermetropic, 5 (21.7%) patients were emmetropic and 3 (13.1%) were myopic. Among the study participants, amblyopia was present in 13 patients (56.6%). The mean preoperative horizontal deviation was 48.04 PD ± 13.3 PD (range = 30–70 PD). Eleven patients had preoperative esotropia of >50 PD and 12 had <50 PD. The mean postoperative horizontal deviation was 5.1 ± 3.1 PD (range = 2–14 PD). Twenty-one (91.30%) patients had orthophoria, 2 (8.70%) patients had residual esotropia and none had overcorrection. Conclusion: The postoperative alignment was not influenced by age at the time of surgery (P = 0.67) and magnitude of preoperative deviation (P = 0.67) Further, the postoperative outcome was independent of the laterality of surgery (unilateral vs. bilateral, P = 0.6) and extraocular muscles operated (horizontal vs. combined horizontal and vertical, P = 0.537).