Surgical Effect of Augmented Modified Kestenbaum Procedure Combined with Conjunctival Recession for the Abnormal Head Position in Congenital Nystagmus

ABSTRACT

We performed surgery for correction of abnormal head turn in 10 patients with congenital nystagmus. For 3 patients with a head turn of 30 degrees, a 40% augmented modified kestenbaum operation was performed. For 4 patients with a head turn of 45 degrees, a 40% augmented modified kestenbaum operation combined with a 3 - 4 mm recession of conjunctival and subconjunctival tissues was performed. Finally, for 3 patients with a head turn of 60 degrees, a 60% augmented modified kestenbaum procedure combined with a 3 - 4 mm recession of conjunctival and subconjunctival tissues was performed. At the final follow-up visit(averaging 5.9 months), 7 patients showed complete corrections of previous head turn and 3 patients showed a small residual head turn of less than 10 degrees to the same side of the preoperative head turn. The average amount of correction we obtained from the surgery described above were 26.7, 42.5 and 56.7 degrees for the patients who had had a preoperative head turn of 30, 45 and 60 degrees respectively. Among the 10 patients, 4 showed no change in corrected visual acuity, but 6 showed increased corrected visual acuity by over 1 Snellen line. From the above results, we concluded that if recession procedure of the conjunctival and subconjunctival tissues was combined with augmented modified Kestenbaum procedure, its effect for correction of abnormal head turn in a patient with congenital nystagmus could be enhanced.