Outcomes of bilateral lateral rectus recession in treatment of recurrent exotropia after bilateral medial rectus resection

Abstract

Purpose: To report the results of bilateral lateral rectus muscle recession for recurrent exotropia in cases where the primary surgery was a bilateral medial rectus resection. Methods: Retrospective chart review of 15 subjects who completed 6 months of follow-up. Data collected included patients’ demographics and pre- and post-operative measurements of ocular alignment and motility. Surgical nomogram used was the same nomogram we use for primary cases of exotropia. Results: At 6-month follow-up, 73.3% of cases had a successful surgical outcome (defined as 8 PD of esotropia to 10 PD of exotropia). In addition, recession of lateral rectus muscles against the previously resected medial recti did not result in a significant increase in the limitation of abduction. Conclusion: Bilateral lateral rectus recession using standard surgical tables is a safe and effective method for treating recurrent exotropia following bilateral medial rectus resection. Even large primary resections up to 12 mm do not seem to affect the results of bilateral lateral rectus recession.

Strabismus Surgery for Psychosocial Reasons—A Literature Review

“…Outcome measures relating to the specific surgical procedure may also be included. For example, the amount of abduction limitation was an outcome of bilateral lateral rectus (LR) recessions for recurrent XT (Elkamshoushy & Langue 2019) and incidence of consecutive XT and reoperation rate were outcomes in a long-term follow-up of surgery for childhood-onset ET. Postoperative drift (Alkharashi & Hunter 2017;Eino & Kraft 1997), whether reoperation was required (Aletaha et al 2016;Alkharashi & Hunter 2017) and complications (Faridi et al 2007) have also been reported as outcome measures, with some including need for reoperation as failure (Dotan et al 2014).…”