Can laser eye surgery treat the squint eye condition?
People often wonder whether or not a squint eye condition can be treated and if it can be then can laser eye surgery help fix the squint eye. First and foremost the need for surgery or laser depends on the severity of the eye condition. That said, the first move should be to consult a squint eye specialist in Mumbai. However, based on what most squint surgeons in Mumbai claim strabismus or squints cannot be treated with laser eye surgery. Squint eye is a condition wherein both the eyes are not aligned appropriately due to the weak eye muscles that control the eye movement. So, technically, to fix the eye condition the patient may require surgery. Explaining more on this in detail we have covered an article that suggests whether or not laser eye surgery can treat squint eye conditions. But before that let us first understand what squint eye surgery is.
Squint eye surgery
Squint eye surgery is basically a procedure that involves altering the muscles around the eye that controls the movement of your eyes. Often due to the weak muscles, the movement of the eyes results in misalignment. Squint surgery is done under a general anesthetic and usually takes less than an hour. So, a person having strabismus or squint eye may be suggested surgery if the condition is severe.
Does laser treatment help squint eye condition
For laser treatment, several considerations need to be evaluated. One such consideration is if a person has amblyopia or lazy eyes due to strabismus, then laser surgery wouldn’t really help. The treatment of laser surgery typically does not help restore vision beyond which may be attainable wearing glasses. So it is clear that laser eye surgery does not really help fix the squint eye condition.
The laser treatment can be considered as an alternative to wearing the correct spectacle or contact lens prescription. It does not help improve the condition but is considered equivalent to spectacles or contact lenses and provides the same results as what spectacles would offer. The treatment does not worsen the squint eye condition but at the same time, it cannot cure the squint as well. Squint surgeons in Mumbai often say that laser cannot restore vision that was not there in the first place. All that it can do is that it can provide the best vision equivalent to spectacles and/or contact lenses which is often recommended before the treatment
However, in some cases, laser surgery helps a person with a squint in both the eyes and having double vision. Double vision occurs since the eyes are not aligned and in sync and therefore the brain receives two different images resulting in a vision issue. For fixing these issues doctors recommend wearing a patch over one eye to conceal the squint. In this scenario, laser treatment can be used to treat people by focusing the dominant eye for distance and focusing the non-dominant eye for close-up effectively. Again in certain squint eye conditions, the patient may need an optical element which is a prism to be built into their spectacles to achieve visual comfort. In this scenario, laser eye surgery cannot replicate the effect of the prism and so the patient may still require glasses after the treatment.