Treatment of intermittent exotropia

To study the long-range results of surgically treated intermittent exotropia, 100 consecutive patients have been followed up for an average of 6.1 years. In all cases, the initial procedure was bilateral recession of the lateral rectus muscles. The overall functional cure rate was 78%. To accomplish this result, 27 patients were operated on a second time, 21 for undercorrection and six for overcorrection. A number of patients cooperated very poorly or were lost to follow-up while still under treatment. Had these patients been eliminated from the series, the cure rate would have been greater than 90%. In this study, bilateral recession of the lateral rectus muscles corrected the distant measurement more than the near measurement only with the divergence excess type of deviation. Also, this procedure was not notably more effective with divergence excess than with basic-type intermittent exotropia.