Recession vs marginal myotomy surgery for strabismus: effects on spatial localization.

Palisade endings (PEs) are found at the musculotendinous junction in eye muscles and this is the site of much strabismus surgery. To assess the role of PEs in supplying proprioceptive information about eye position, we compared the effects of marginal myotomy and recession surgeries on tests of eye-hand coordination (open-loop pointing responses) taken before and after surgery in two groups of children having medial rectus weakening procedures for the first time. The results indicate that the myotomy is more proprioceptively "de-afferenting" than the recession, and we assume this is due to the greater disruption of PEs in this procedure.