There
are six muscles responsible for the movement of the eyes. Two of them
control the horizontal movement-- one for inward movement, and one for
outward. Each eye muscle receives its instructions from one of three
cranial nerves. In Duane Syndrome (DS), cranial nerve VI, also known as
the abducens nerve, is either missing or malfunctioning. This nerve
sends the instructions for the outer movement of the eye.
There
are three main types of Duane Syndrome. Thomas has Type I DS, which
means that he can move his eyes inward, but not outward. When Thomas
wants to look at something to his right, for example, his left eye will
turn inward as it should. His right eye will get to about mid-line and
then won't go any farther. In order to keep his depth perception and
look at something with both eyes, he has to turn his head. This means
that he's unable to track something unless it is fairly slow, because he
has to turn his head to keep it in both eyes in line. (Try doing this
sometime-- look straight in front of you and turn your head to watch
something instead of your eyes. It's exhausting.) It also causes
problems because people automatically align themselves with the eye
that's straight ahead and think he's paying attention, when in fact the
dog or mime in a box or whatever it is he's actually trying to look at
is off to one side. About 80% of people with DS have it in only one eye.
Thomas is one of the "lucky" 20% that has it in both.
There's
not much they can do for DS. Surgery isn't going to help when it's a
problem with the nerve and not with the muscle-- usually the only reason
surgery would be involved with DS is to correct a head tilt caused by
someone trying to keep their eyes aligned. You can't really "retrain"
the problem either by using a patch, for the same reason. Thomas
actually compensates pretty well.
Here's some good links involving Duane Syndrome:
My son was just diagnosed with Duanes Syndrome, he is 7 1/2 months now. We are being told glasses and an eye patch 30 minutes a day to try to strenghten the sight in his right eye. Any suggestions or advice please reach out to me. kate.babicz@gmail.com
ReplyDeletemy daughter had a eye exam today and was diagnosed with drs as well I am not sure why just now when she was 3 they checked her we were told she had a lazy eye now to find this out is hard on us getting glasses is this acceptable with SS benifits ??
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