[History of strabismus surgery]

The history of strabismus surgery starts from the end of the eighteenth century. The first surgical trials consisted of performing myotomies of the medial rectus. Although Taylor from Great Britain could be one of the first to be mentioned, it was Dieffenbach from Germany who accomplished the first official myotomy in 1839. He is followed by many authors as Roux, Velpeau in Paris, and Bonnet in Lyon, the latter performing tenotomy instead of myotomy. In 1849 Guerin performed muscular advancement. In 1883, de Wecker described the muscular pleating, and Blascowiczs the muscular resection. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, the surgical treatment of esodeviations was supported by methods aimed to weaken the medial rectus (tenotomies, myotomies) and to strengthen the lateral rectus (advancement, pleating and resection). During twentieth century, progress achieved in anesthesiology and the quality of suture material led Jameson (1922) to substitute tenotomy by muscular recession. Since then, the surgery of squint has never been modified basically up to 1970 when Cuppers created the retro-equatorial myopexy. Thus, two kinds of surgical technics are currently available to surgeons: classic surgery, recession, resection and their variants, dealing with the static component of the deviation angle, and the Faden Operation of Cuppers struggling against the dynamic or innervational component.