Early surgical alignment for congenital esotropia.

To provide sufficient numbers of patients varying in age of initial adequate surgical alignment for congenital esotropia, 154 patients managed by seven ophthalmologists in three countries were personally examined by the author and the results compiled for a clinical study. Examiner bias was minimized by having the examination performed without prior knowledge of the clinical history and the tests were standardized in both method of examination and test devices. From this population group 106 patients were chosen who had reliable answers, satisfactory alignment and an ophthalmologist's exam of the congenital nature of the problem by at least one year of age. The results of sensory testing showed that those adequately aligned by the age of 6 months versus 12 months versus 24 months were not statistically different, but those patients aligned after 24 months of age demonstrated a significantly lower percentage with evidence for binocularity (p less than .001).