Case studies of a new approach using partial and selective occlusion for the clinical treatment of diplopia.

Diplopia is a serious and intolerable sequelae to the problems of strabismus, ophthalmoplegia, gaze palsy, and decompensated binocular skills that occur in patients with head injury, stroke and other neurologically compromising conditions. A variety of treatment measures are available for diplopia, but they are not always successful. When treatment is either not used, or fails, patching has been used to occlude the vision of one eye. Although patching is effective in eliminating diplopia, it creates problems by rendering the patient monocular. Monocular vision causes a loss of stereopsis and reduction of peripheral visual field which in turn causes problems in eye hand coordination, depth judgments, orientation, balance, and mobility. A new method of treating diplopia, the 'spot patch', has been successfully evaluated. It is a procedure that eliminates diplopia without the limitations and side effects of traditional patching.