How do doctors treat an eye turn?

There are only three basic methods: 1. Surgery 2. Prism Glasses 3. Vision Therapy
 
The fourth and most common is to not treat.

First, treating an eye turn is not easy and often complicated, None of us have a simple answer or miracle cure.
1. The oldest method is surgery to cut a muscle causing the eye to move either inward or outward.

 
What are the advantages? :
1. There is only one. It is quick. Although some include vision therapy after it is done to keep the eye in place.
What are the disadvantages (It is very invasive)?
1. It has a low cure rate of only 50% at best. One of the better studies showed the success rate in the teens. Also, a surgeon considers success with a remaining turn up to 20 degrees. 
2. When you cut an eye muscle the heart beat stops, One year 50 children’s hearts did not start again. It was hard to find statistics after that. In Lodi, there is a girl who yearly thanks her eye surgeon for saving her life by restarting her heart on the operation table. The heart stopped as a result of his surgery.
 

3. Both measuring of the turn and the amount to cut is not an exact science and often repeat surgeries are necessary.

4. There is a lot of blood during the surgery and adhesion's can lock the eye in place.
       
      
5. Although rare, death and other complications from anesthesia exist.

6.  The eye can be twisted causing an unnatural change in eyeglass prescription, distortion, and disorientation.
7. If either of the superior or inferior oblique muscles are cut (often in large turns) one eye often looks higher than the other oft resulting in a head tilt
2. The next to oldest is prescribing prisms in your glasses to compensate for the turn.

    
What are the advantages? :
        1. It also is quick.
     
 2. The complications of surgery are absent. It is non invasive.
What are the disadvantages? :
1. The thickness of the glasses making them unsightly. Even the striated lines of Fresnel thin prisms are unsightly and diminish clarity.
     
  2  Dizziness is common and adaption can be difficult.
 
3.. Often the prism power must be increased over time
Methods 1 (surgery) And 2 (prisms) are based on a fallacy of a weak eye muscle. The theory is that the muscle is too weak to keep the eye aligned.
Picture


Dr. William Lancaster at Dartmouth Eye Institute more than 90 years ago proved the eye muscles to be at least 50 times stronger than needed to move the eye. 
Yet, you do not even need to read the study. Simply ask the person with an eye turn to move their eyes all the way to the left then to the right. You will see either eye turned all the way to the edge and vice versa. Thus there is no weak muscle.
An eye turn is a coordination condition not a faulty muscle.  That leaves the third alternative.
3. Vision Therapy

    What are the advantages? :
        1. The complications of surgery are absent. It is non invasive.
2. It has a higher success rate, 87% for an outward turn and 67% for an inward turn. It drops to 25% if previous surgery was done. This success rate is based on zero eye turn and binocularity, not a 20-degree margin.
       
  




3. The eyes are truly functioning as a team and increased skills in learning, work, and athletics take place. Look at our success stories.



4. The results tend to last and even improve rather than regress.
5. It can actually be fun!

What are the disadvantages? :
1. It takes time and discipline. At least 12 office visits are required.
Below is a colleague, Julie Steinhauer in Glen Carbon, IL with an interesting view of vision therapy and light therapy of which we also use  to improve your life.