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Abnormal fixational eye movements in strabismus
  1. Fatema F Ghasia1,
  2. Jorge Otero-Millan2,
  3. Aasef G Shaikh3,4,5
  1. 1 Daroff-Del’Osso Ocular Motility Laboratory, Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
  2. 2 Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  3. 3 Department of Neurology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
  4. 4 Neurology Service, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
  5. 5 Neurology, Daroff-Del’Osso Ocular Motility Laboratory, Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Fatema F Ghasia, Cole Eye Institute Cleveland Clinic 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA; fatemaghasia{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Introduction Fixational saccades are miniature eye movements that constantly change the gaze during attempted visual fixation. Visually guided saccades and fixational saccades represent an oculomotor continuum and are produced by common neural machinery. Patients with strabismus have disconjugate binocular horizontal saccades. We examined the stability and variability of eye position during fixation in patients with strabismus and correlated the severity of fixational instability with strabismus angle and binocular vision.

Methods Eye movements were measured in 13 patients with strabismus and 16 controls during fixation and visually guided saccades under monocular viewing conditions. Fixational saccades and intersaccadic drifts were analysed in the viewing and non-viewing eye of patients with strabismus and controls.

Results We found an increase in fixational instability in patients with strabismus compared with controls. We also found an increase in the disconjugacy of fixational saccades and intrasaccadic ocular drift in patients with strabismus compared with controls. The disconjugacy was worse in patients with large-angle strabismus and absent stereopsis. There was an increase in eye position variance during drifts in patients with strabismus. Our findings suggest that both fixational saccades and intersaccadic drifts are abnormal and likely contribute to the fixational instability in patients with strabismus.

Discussion Fixational instability could be a useful tool for mass screenings of children to diagnose strabismus in the absence of amblyopia and latent nystagmus. The increased disconjugacy of fixational eye movements and visually guided saccades in patients with strabismus reflects the disruption of the fine-tuning of the motor and visual systems responsible for achieving binocular fusion in these patients.

  • fixational saccades
  • gaze holding
  • ocular drift
  • strabismus
  • children

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Footnotes

  • Contributors Conceptualization: FG and AGS. Data collection and analysis: FG and AGS. Funding acquisition: FG. Writing, reviewing and editing: FG, JO-M and AGS.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent Obtained.

  • Ethics approval Cleveland Clinic IRB.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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