What should I do if my child's eyes are a little cross-eyed?

Nowadays, many children like to watch cartoons frequently and they usually have incorrect sitting posture, which will lead to farsightedness and myopia over time. The most serious condition is cross-eyes, which means the two eyes are symmetrical and close to the middle. This kind of cross-eyes will affect the eye health of children.

There are many types of strabismus, the most common of which are

The most common is the inward deviation of the eyeball, medically known as esotropia, commonly known as "cross-eyed" or "cross-eyed". The outward deviation of the eyeball is called exotropia, commonly known as "squinting eyes". Of course, strabismus does not only refer to the situation where there is an obvious deformity in the relative position of the two eyes. It also includes the situation where the strabismus is very small and not easily noticeable on the surface, but the binocular vision function is abnormal. It also includes the situation where there is no strabismus at all but the binocular vision function is abnormal. Therefore, the concept of strabismus should be understood as abnormalities in both the relative position of the two eyes and the binocular vision function.

Why is strabismus more common in children? The main reasons are as follows:

(1) Imperfect development: Children, especially infants and young children, have incomplete binocular vision function and cannot coordinate the extraocular muscles well. Any unstable factors can lead to the occurrence of strabismus. Human's monocular vision function is gradually developed after birth. Just like the visual function, this function is established by repeatedly receiving stimulation from clear external images, and gradually develops and matures. Infants only have gross fusion image 2 months after birth, and the establishment of precise fusion image function will continue until after 5 years old. Stereoscopic vision is established at the latest, and it is close to that of adults at 6 to 7 years old. Therefore, the period before the age of 5 when binocular single vision function is not yet perfect is a high incidence period of strabismus in children.

(2) Congenital abnormalities: This type of strabismus is mostly caused by congenital abnormalities in the position and development of the extraocular muscles, abnormal development of the extraocular muscles themselves, incomplete differentiation of the mesoderm, poor separation of the eye muscles, abnormal muscle sheaths and fibrosis, and other anatomical defects or paralysis of the nerves that control the muscles. Some cases are due to the use of forceps during delivery, which causes damage to the baby's head and face, or the mother's excessive force during delivery, which causes increased intracranial pressure on the fetus and produces punctate hemorrhages in the brain. The bleeding happens to be in the nerve nucleus that controls eye movement, causing paralysis of the extraocular muscles. In addition, there are also genetic factors. Strabismus is not inherited by all members of the family. This defect is often indirectly passed on to the next generation of children. Generally, strabismus that occurs within 6 months after birth is called congenital strabismus. It does not have the basic conditions for establishing binocular vision and has the greatest harm to the development of visual function.

(3) The characteristics of eye development make children susceptible to strabismus: because children’s eyeballs are small and their eye axes are short, they are mostly farsighted. Also, because children’s corneas and lenses have strong refractive power and their ciliary muscles have strong contraction power, they have strong accommodation power. Such children need more accommodation power to see objects clearly. At the same time, their eyes turn inward forcefully, resulting in excessive convergence, which can easily cause esotropia, a type of esotropia called accommodative esotropia.