This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Surgical treatment of congenital ptosis may resolve some cases of amblyopia
Ophthal Plast Reconstr Surg. 2008;24(6):434-436.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Prevalence of amblyopia is higher among pediatric patients with ptosis than in the general population, and surgical correction of the lid resulted in resolution of some cases of amblyopia, according to a study.
Although the degree of amblyopia is generally understood to correlate with the severity of ptosis, there is little evidence to suggest that surgical correction of ptosis results in improvements in visual acuity. However, a diagnosis of postoperative amblyopia was reduced in a cohort of patients treated surgically for congenital ptosis without associated strabismus or anisometropia.
In the group of patients, nine patients were diagnosed with amblyopia before surgery, and one after.
"In the nonsurgical group, two patients had amblyopia on initial examination, which increased to four during follow up. Furthermore, there were no new cases of amblyopia diagnosed postoperatively in the surgical group," the study authors said.
Because of the sample size, the results did not reach statistical significance, "but they suggest that surgical intervention in isolated congenital ptosis may aid in the treatment of amblyopia," the authors said.