Assessment of psychomotor development before and after strabismus surgery for infantile esotropia.

Purpose: To assess motor and mental development before and after strabismus surgery in children with infantile esotropia.

Patients And Methods: Mental and motor development indexes of 20 children with infantile esotropia without neurologic abnormalities and 17 age-matched healthy control subjects were prospectively tested at regular intervals before and after strabismus surgery with the Dutch version of the Bayley and ordinal scales of infant development.

Results: The mean age for surgery in the study group was 13.5 months. Before strabismus surgery, the Bayley scales of infant development showed a significant delay in both mental (P < .045) and motor (P < .008) development for children with infantile esotropia compared with the control group. Three weeks after surgery, the delay in mental development had disappeared. The delay in motor development persisted for months. Two of the 7 ordinal scales--object permanence (P < .01) and means-end (P < .036)--showed a statistically significant delay for children with infantile esotropia. Three weeks after strabismus surgery, there was no difference between the study group and the control group.

Conclusions: Children with infantile esotropia had delayed motor and mental development compared with healthy children. After strabismus surgery, patients recovered mentally, but their motor delays persisted for months when tested with the Bayley scales of infant development.