Surgical treatment of Duane retraction syndrome

Surgical treatment in Duane retraction syndrome (DRS) can be very challenging even for the strabismus specialists because of a wide spectrum of diversity in clinical manifestations. The purpose of this article is to review these different surgical treatments.

A comprehensive search was performed using PubMed database with the different keywords of "Duane retraction syndrome" and "surgery". Articles were selected from original English papers published since 2000. The full text of the selected articles was reviewed, and some articles were added based upon the references of the initial articles. We also provided selected case examples about some of these procedures.

125 articles were found in the initial search of which 37 articles were mostly related to the topic of this review. The number finally increased to 59 articles after considering the relative references of the initial articles. Different surgical methods performed on horizontal and vertical rectus muscles (recession, resection, transposition, Y splitting, periosteal fixation and posterior fixation suture) are reviewed. Careful selection of the surgical technique is important to achieve optimal results.

With accurate diagnosis of patients with DRS and proper surgical management, several adverse situations associated with this syndrome (amblyopia, abnormal head posture, upshoot, downshoot, and muscle underaction) can be prevented.