The accommodative portion of mixed esotropia

This study reports observations on the subsequent course of the accommodative component in 139 patients with mixed esotropia after surgery for the nonaccommodative portion of the deviation. An unexpected finding was the presence of a normal distance/near relationship at the time of operation in 69% of these patients. In 40 cases (29%), the accommodative component subsided during the 1st postoperative year. In the remaining patients, the occurrence rate of improvement at longer intervals was similar to that for patients with pure accommodative esotropia observed in prior studies. Persistence was associated with preoperative spherical equivalent hypermetropia of more than 3.00 diopters, but not with a history of strabismus in close relatives. Accommodative esotropia appears to behave the same in pure and in mixed forms.