Nystagmus is a rhythmic, involuntary back and forth movement of the eyes in both eyes.
Nystagmus is classified into physiological nystagmus, congenital nystagmus and centrally acquired nystagmus. The common nystagmus in ophthalmology is mainly congenital nystagmus, which can be manifested as dominant or recessive (including dominant recessive). Bian Ziyu, Ophthalmology Department, Xinghua Second People’s Hospital
Nystagmus can manifest symptoms such as decreased visual acuity, tilted head vision, combined strabismus, and vibrational phantom vision, which bring trouble and pain to patients’ life, work and study. Nystagmus patients are unable to look at external objects steadily, resulting in a decrease in the quality of vision in both eyes, especially in childhood, which adversely affects the normal development of vision, and this also affects daily life in adulthood, such as driving. Many patients with congenital nystagmus also have a tilted head in order to obtain better vision at a certain angle of gaze than in front of them, but this has an impact on their appearance and even causes asymmetry in facial development. In some patients, there is a significant change in the degree of nystagmus when looking with one eye separately and with both eyes simultaneously. In addition, some central diseases such as intracranial tumors and vascular diseases cause nystagmus and congenital nystagmus that are difficult to distinguish by visual observation alone.
The current treatment of congenital nystagmus includes optical correction with binocular isotropic or anisotropic trigeminal lenses, Anderson-Kestenbaum procedure to correct the intermediate band and compensate for head position, manual abduction to promote pooling suppression, and Tenotomy to improve the central macular sulcus gaze time. The goals of surgical treatment for congenital nystagmus include both improving compensatory head position and/or improving visual quality in both eyes. The improvement of visual quality for nystagmus patients mainly includes both improvement of binocular and monocular visual acuity and expansion of the range of visual field of gaze.