Treatment outcomes in refractive accommodative esotropia.

Purpose: To document and compare the clinical features and functional outcomes in patients with accommodative esotropia. To assess the efficacy of conventional management of accommodative esotropia, to determine functional outcomes of amblyopia and binocular vision, and to analyze possible risk factors involving the development of amblyopia.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the charts of 147 patients whose esotropia was corrected to within 10 prism diopters of orthotropia at both distance and near with use of full cycloplegic hyperopic correction. Multiple parameters were reviewed, including initial and final cycloplegic refraction, distance, and near deviation with and without glasses, stereoacuity, age of onset, and initiation of treatment, presence of anisometropia, and change in hyperopia.

Results: At presentation, 87 (59.2%) of the 147 patients were amblyopic, and anisometropia was found to be the only statistically significant risk factor for this (P = .001). Only 24.2% of these patients have stereo acuity between 40 and 100 sec/arc, 20.96% of patients have 200 to 800 sec/arc, and 22.58% of patients have 1980 to 3000 sec/arc; the remaining 32.26% had no stereo acuity. Fusion was achieved in 73.5% of the patients and later presentation (> 24 months) of esodeviation significantly determined their fusional ability (P = .031). Consecutive exotropia developed in 5.4 % of the patients an average of 5.5 years after institution of full optical correction. For clinical and functional outcomes we did not find any statistically significant difference between early onset (before 1 year old) and typical onset (2 to 3 years) age groups. The trend towards decreasing hyperopia was apparent, averaging -0.16 +/- 0.20 diopters annually in 80.5% of the patients with at least 5 years follow-up, although 23% of patients still had 20/40 or worse visual acuity in the amblyopic eye.

Conclusions: Amblyopia is a commonly associated finding at presentation for patients with accommodative esotropia. Most of the patients developed good fusion but poor stereopsis at the end of treatment.