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Study: No link seen between strabismus surgery, development of mental illness
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Children with intermittent exotropia who underwent strabismus surgery did not appear to have a lower or higher rate of developing mental illness, a study found.
"Strabismus surgery, regardless of success or age at surgery, for children with intermittent exotropia, did not decrease or otherwise alter the development of mental illness by early adulthood," Brian G. Mohney, MD, and colleagues said in a poster study at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting here.
Dr. Mohney and colleagues retrospectively reviewed medical records of 183 children younger than 19 years who were diagnosed with intermittent exotropia between 1975 and 1994.
They found that 97 children (53.3%) were diagnosed with mental illness at a follow-up of a mean age of 23.3 years (range, 6 to 41 years). Of those, 33 children (34%) underwent surgery.
There was no difference in age at time of surgery or frequency of surgical occurrence between the 86 patients who did not develop mental illness in early adulthood and those who did.
What is remarkable is the high incidence of mental illness (53%) developing in patients with intermittent exotropia. This makes me wonder if they were studying a select group of patients and what they defined as mental illness. The information to determine this was not available in the abstract I read. I don’t think most ophthalmologists have recognized a significant association between intermittent exotropia and the development of mental illness.
– Rudolph S. Wagner, MD
OSN Pediatrics/Strabismus Board Member