Effects of surgery on the dominant eye in exodeviations

It has been suggested that operating the dominant eye is a more effective way of treatment for exodeviations than the conventional non-dominant eye surgery. We have tested this idea in groups of children and adults with intermittent and constant exotropia. In a first group of 30 patients where the non-dominant eye was operated on, we found that our initial technique resulted in an undercorrection averaging 11 prism diopters. Modification of the technique, by increasing the relative amount of surgery on the non-dominant eye in another group of 41 patients, improved the results significantly in adult patients, but not in children. Operations on the dominant eye in a third group of 26 patients were no more successful than non-dominant eye surgery with the initial technique. Thus, we did not obtain better results in operations on the dominant eye with our technique than we did with surgery on the non-dominant eye.