Two major factors determine whether strabismus should be operated

  Pediatric strabismus is a condition in which both eyes of a child look in one eye while the other eye appears skewed, meaning that the position of the two eyes is asymmetrical. Most pediatric strabismus does not work well with conservative treatment and requires surgery. However, parents always expect conservative treatment to work and are fearful and doubtful about strabismus surgery, struggling with whether their child should have surgery or not.  The need for surgery depends on two main factors: first, the degree of the child’s eye position (degree of strabismus); if the degree of strabismus is large and cannot be controlled by conservative methods such as wearing glasses, surgery is needed; second, it depends on whether the strabismus affects the child’s binocular vision function, especially the stereo vision function. If the examination reveals that binocular vision function has been affected, for example, the fusion function of both eyes has begun to break down, surgery should be performed as soon as possible. Because the normal human binocular vision function basically develops and matures before school age, if the child is too old, it will be difficult to recover the function after surgery.  Therefore, early detection and treatment of pediatric strabismus is very important. Parents should not delay treatment because they are afraid of surgery, but must bring their children to the hospital for examination in time to avoid missing the best time for surgery. In the end, strabismus surgery is not only to restore the appearance, but more importantly, to restore the binocular vision function so that the child can see normally, and this condition is called completely cured.  There are three levels of binocular vision: simultaneous visual function (the function of simultaneous perception in both eyes), fusion function and stereopsis function.  Fusion: This includes sensory fusion and motor fusion. When the image of an object falls on the corresponding point of the retina of both eyes, the image seen by both eyes is only slightly different, and the sensory fusion function can combine the two objects into one complete object; if the image of an object does not fall on the corresponding point of the retina of both eyes, the objects of both eyes are separated, and the motor fusion function can regulate the eye movement through the visual center, and then the two objects fall on the corresponding point of the retina and fuse the objects together. The two objects fall on the corresponding points of the retina and fuse the objects together.  Stereopsis: Based on the fusion function, the object seen by both eyes has the function of three-dimensional image, which can also be considered as the function of perceiving the distance and depth of the object.