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Factors associated with the effectiveness of part-time patching for intermittent exotropia in children
Heeyoung Choi1, Su Jin Kim2, Jaeho Jung3
1Department of Ophthalmology, Pusan National University Hospital, School of Medicine, Biomedical Research Institute, Pusan National University, Busan, Korea.
Purpose:
To evaluate the factors associated with the efficacy of low-dose part-time patching in children with intermittent exotropia (IXT).
Methods:
In this prospective observational study, we enrolled 186 patients diagnosed with IXT. Outcome measures included office based control scales, magnitude of exo-deviation, and stereoacuity at near and distance after daily patching for 2 h. We analyzed the clinical data and demographic factors association with improvement of IXT.
Results:
The study was completed by 152 subjects of total enrolled patients on a consecutive basis followed up for 1 year. Decrease in the magnitude of exo-deviation, improvement of control, and or gain of stereoacuity were observed in 31.6% patients of the recruited subjects after part-time patching. Multivariate analyses showed that prognostic factors determining improvement to part-time patching included convergence insufficiency (CI) type IXT (p = 0.016), poor distance stereopsis (p = 0.044), and large exotropic deviation at distance (p = 0.025).
Conclusions:
CI-type exotropia, large distance magnitude of exo-deviation, or poor distance stereopsis appear to be associated with a better response to part-time patching. Therefore low dose part-time patching may be a useful non-surgical treatment alternative to delay surgery in these cases.
