Adaptation to prism-induced heterophoria in subjects with abnormal binocular vision or asthenopia.

In a previous study we investigated how normal subjects adapted to prism-induced heterophoria. In this study we have continued this work by investigating this phenomena in 15 patients with abnormal binocular vision and/or asthenopia. It was found that the majority of subjects lacked or had a deficient adaptation system to base-in and/or base-out prisms, but all except two subjects examined adapted normally to vertical prism. These results suggest that it may be possible to treat the horizontal adaptation system independently from the vertical one. Prism vergences, heterophoria measurements, and the presence of fixation disparity gave little indication of the adaptation ability of the subjects. Symptoms correlated well with adaptation ability.