5 Questions to ask Your Surgeon BEFORE Strabismus Surgery

Deciding to get Strabismos surgery can be nerve-wracking

Trust me, I know. I just went through it all two months ago

So today I want to talk about the questions that you should be asking your surgeon before you have the surgery

They'll help you have the best possible experience. So without further ado, here are the five questions I would make sure to ask your surgeon before you have surgery

First, what type of surgery do you do? So this is kind of a trick question because you're trying to make sure they only do strabismus surgery

You want someone who is a specialist who eats, breathe, and sleeps strabismus surgery because it's an art and you want an artist who knows exactly what they're doing

You don't want somebody who's dabbling in strabismos surgery. So make sure they only are focused on strabismos surgery

Second, the question that I think a lot of people don't think to ask is which eye are you operating on

Some people think that, oh, well, this eye's always straight and this eye's always out

So, of course, they're just going to operate on the one that's always out. But what they don't realize is both eyes actually have the same problem

If you straighten this one, this one goes out and vice versa. Or the same thing if it's isotopia

They go like this. So make sure you know, is your surgeon operating on one eye

both eyes. And honestly, the results don't differ according to research by too much. It's mostly

a matter of how they were trained and also how large the angle is. If it's just a tiny angle

they'll probably just operate on one eye. If it's a really large angle, they might need to

operate on both eyes in order to get the result that you're looking for. So I'm not a surgeon

I can tell you what the right answer is but yours can So make sure that you ask that question The third question that really important to know is are is your surgeon going to be using adjustable sutures Adjustable sutures are where your surgeon does

the whole surgery, makes your eyes look straight or however they, they're putting them

to for the best result, and then they leave some of the stitches not tied off so that

they can go back a few hours later or even up to a week later and make some

fine-tune adjustments. So my surgeon did this and I'm so glad he did. I'm going to show a picture right now

So after surgery, my eye decided to go all the way in, which was after surgery, my eye decided to go all the way in, which

was not okay. He made him straight and within a few hours my eye had turned way in. So I was so

glad that he was using adjustable sutures because he was able to go back a week later and make my

eyes straight, which I'm so glad. Some surgeons don't use this and they don't find that it's

necessary. They say that over time it's not going to make a difference. So it's an important

question to ask your surgeon, are they using adjustable sutures or not? One reason that it's

really important is if you are a parent and you have kids and you're trying to come up with people

to help you with driving or help you with other things while you're recovering, it's good to know

that after your sutures are adjusted, you kind of start the whole recovery process all over again

And so you're going to need that help with driving and all those things again. So make sure you ask your surgeon if he or she is planning on using adjustable sutures for your surgery

The fourth question that I think everybody should ask those surgeons is will there be a prism adaptation test So what is that You might wonder especially if you having double vision

This is really important. So prism adaptation test is when they put a sticker prism on your glasses that makes it so that both eyes are looking at the same thing

Kind of. So if my eyes are sitting like this and this eye is looking at a tree, this eye is not looking at the tree

there's no way for the brain to fuse those two images together. But with a prism on your

glasses, it moves the image of the tree out. And so it gives the eyes a chance to try to fuse that

tree into one. And so it's a good way to tell if after the surgery and your eyes are aligned

if your brain is going to be able to fuse those things together. Also, the prisms are used

so that if you are holding your eyes straight, you use this, they put a prism on your glasses

and your eye might start relaxing out, relaxing out, relaxing out. And so instead of having an angle of 20 degrees, it might actually be 40 degrees

Well, this is super important to know before the surgery, because if they correct you for only 20 degrees

your eyes are just going to go back out again. It's not going to actually fix the problem. And so they need to know what the full angle is

So they do that using the prism adaptation test. So ask your surgeon, do you use prisms before surgery to help you know better how to perform the actual

surgery. And the last question that I think everyone should ask themselves and ask the surgeon is

what results are you trying to get? For some people, surbizma surgery is mostly cosmetic

They have an eye turn and it's just kind of miserable, right? Like, I've lived that. Here's a

picture Right So no one it not fun to talk to me people when they don know which I to look at and they looking Over their shoulder trying to figure out where where are you looking and they trying to move to where your eyes are

It's just not fun so having your eyes cosmetically straight is fantastic

It's so nice some people that's the only goal that they have

Others are noticing problems with their vision and having your eyes align can actually improve your peripheral vision

Even if you're still suppressing one of your eyes Some people are experiencing terrible double vision and they're trying to get the double vision to go away by aligning the eyes

Others are working towards stereopsis and they want both eyes to work together so that they can have that binocular vision and have the depth perception

Everyone has a different goal in mind with Strabismus surgery and for each person and each situation, it's totally different

So you need to do your job and research what you are looking for

to the final result you want. I'm all about stereopsis. So my goal is to have both of my eyes aligned and working together

which is definitely the hardest option and the most time-consuming because it requires a lot of vision therapy, surgery, and a lot more vision therapy

So I made sure to communicate that to my surgeon before he even cut into my eyes

so that he knew and that we could have our goals and be on the same page

So definitely talk to your surgeon about it. make sure you're on the same page with that

So those are the five questions that I would make sure you talk to your surgeon about

before having Strabismus surgery. And if you want the other 22 questions that I ask my surgeon

plus all the answers that he gave me, all written out, it's all on my website at lazyeyesolutions.com slash surgery questions

Good luck with your surgery, and I hope it goes amazingly well