The Effect of Atropinization of Refractive Accommodative Esotropia Patients with Amblyopia

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The present study examined the effect of amblyopia treatment by applying atropine to patients with refractive accommodative esotropia and amblyopia. METHODS: The subjects were chosen from patients who visited the Wonju Christian Hospital for esotropia between July 2000 and July 2002. The subjects of this study included 15 patients who had refractive accommodative esotropia and amblyopia, 7 patients who could not receive visual acuity tests and showed monocular fixation. Atropine was applied to the 22 subjects, and its effect in treating amblyopia was examined. RESULTS: The fixation changed from monocular esotropia to alternating strabismus, or from healthy eye to amblyopia in 20 subjects (90.9%). Alternating strabismus continued since the dropping of atropine was stopped after the treatment of 17 subjects (77.3%), and fixating eyes changed to sound eyes in 5 subjects (22.7%). For patients who could receive visual acuity tests, 2 patients (13.4%) showed that those visual acuity did not improve by one line on the Snellen chart, and 13 patients (86.7%) showed improvement by two or more lines. CONCLUSIONS: In the present study, the effect of atropine applied to patients with refractive accommodative esotropia and amblyopia was not perfect in treating the amblyopia. However, 86.6% of them who could receive visual acuity tests showed improvement by two or more lines on the Snellen Chart, and 40.0% of them showed same visual acuity with sound eyes. In addition, in 77.3% of the subjects, the type of esotropia changed from monocular esotropia to alternating strabismus.