The relationship of age at surgical alignment and the development of stereopsis in infantile esotropia

Abstract

Objective: To determine the power of the stereopsis and the relationship between the development of stereopsis and age at surgical alignment in patients with infantile esotropia.
Methods: A cross sectional study on 110 children with infantile esotropia who underwent a single operation from 1/1/2011 to 1/1/2014 and had alignment within 10 PD of orthotropia at all follow-up examinations. Stereopsis was assessed by the Original Randot Stereotest.
Results: The mean age at surgery was 36.79 ± 16.05 months (range, 16–72 months). The percenrtage of patients having stereopsis was 30.9% (34 patients). 26 patients operated at 16-24 months (68.42%) and 8 patients operated at 24-48 months (20.51%) had stereopsis. No patient operated after 39 months had stereopsis. There was a statistically significant correlation between age at surgery and final stereopsis (rS = 0,649; p<0.001). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that the optimum cut-off value of the age at surgery for predicting stereopsis was 21.5 months (Youden index = 0.378; area under ROC curve = 0.827; 95% CI: 0.74-0.92; p<0.001).
Conclusion: Age at surgery plays an important role in the development of stereopsis. Surgery for infantile esotropia is most likely to result in measureable stereopsis if patient age at alignment is not more than 21.5 months.
Conflicts of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.