Surgical outcomes of medial Rectus advancement for consecutive exotropia

To evaluate the surgical results of medial rectus muscle advancement for consecutive exotropia.

The medical data of patients that underwent reoperation between the years 2000-2020 were collected and reviewed retrospectively. Patients who underwent medial rectus advancement for consecutive exotropia were included. The exclusion criteria were follow-up period shorter than 6 months, past reoperations and restrictive or paralytic strabismus. Success was defined as alignment within 10 PD of orthophoria at last follow-up. The success group of patients was compared with the failure group.

Twenty patients with mean postoperative follow-up from the second surgery of 34.7  ±  29.2 months were included. On last follow-up examination, 9 (45.0%) patients had a successful result. Nine patients had undercorrection and 2 had overcorrection. The two groups were similar in the preoperative amount of mean exotropia, 23.3  ±  9.9 PD in the success group and 29.8  ±  14.0 PD in the failure group. On last follow-up examination, the amount of mean deviation was 2.7  ±  2.6 PD exotropia in the success group and 13.4  ±  23.6 PD exotropia in the failure group.

Medial rectus advancement for the correction of consecutive exotropia was successful in almost half of the cases. Failure was usually due to undercorrection.