Nonsurgical treatment of convergent strabismus.

It is generally agreed that surgical treatment of convergent strabismus should be withheld until all other less traumatic approaches have proved ineffectual. There are four categories of nonsurgical treatment. One is psychiatric. Too often psychiatric problems in the causation of convergent strabismus are either overlooked or unrecognized. Another is the proper employment of optical devices. For example, spectacle lenses to eliminate the need for excessive accommodation with its associated convergence excess, and the employment of prisms in the lenses to permit the two eyes to see as a unit even though they may not be properly anatomically oriented. Another kind of treatment is orthoptics, the use of exercises and rather complex optical equipment in a laboratory to train the patient in coordination between the two eyes. Treatment with drugs is based on the fact that certain drugs reduce the effort necessary for accommodation (much as eye-glasses do) and therefore lessen the stimulus toward convergence which may possibly tend toward the development of convergent strabismus.