4 Reasons You Should Try Vision Therapy BEFORE Strabismus Surgery

Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have Strabismus

Stavis is when your eyes don't point in the same direction like this

I have been working for the last four years on getting my eyes to not only look straight but also to work together

And that has involved a lot of different things. Today I want to discuss two different things, surgery and vision therapy

And I want to give you four reasons that I recommend. trying vision therapy before going for the surgery. I have tried both surgery and vision therapy

so that is where I'm coming from. I have a lot of free resources and other resources that you can

use to help you decide what might be better for you, vision therapy or surgery. If you want me to

help you find vision therapy, all of that information can be found at learn.strobismosolutions.com

and there's so much out there. So a lot of people think that if you have Sturbismus

it's kind of hopeless. You just need to know there are so many options

So let's get into my four reasons why I believe you should always try vision therapy

before going for the surgery. First is probably pretty obvious. What if the vision therapy works

and you don't end up needing to have the surgery at all? My husband's a physical therapist

and the number of times that he's had patients that have been recommended for surgery

and then they come into physical therapy and they actually fix the problem and don't end up

needing surgery at all. So many times that is what happens. So avoiding surgery is a huge deal

I mean, just the risks of undergoing anesthesia, especially for little kids, the recovery

the redness of your eyes, scar tissue, nerve damage, your eyelid. Like there's just so many things

that are risks with surgery. And it just not fun right Like it uncomfortable So if you can avoid that by doing a therapy first it definitely ideal So just like you would do physical therapy before having a knee surgery you should do eye therapy before having an eye surgery because maybe it work

The second reason I think you should do vision therapy first is that there are certain risks with surgery

And I kind of talked about that already, but some specific risks are that if your eyes are made straight, your surgeon does a great job, put your eyes in a straight position, but your brain isn't on board with that, your brain can do a lot of crazy stuff to get rid of the double vision that will make vision therapy more complicated down the road

For example, when I had my surgeries when I was little, my eyes were really straight, but I didn't want the double vision

My brain was like no double vision, and so it actually moved on my eyes up. So instead of just having a horizontal deviation

I then had a vertical and a horizontal deviation, which makes vision therapy a lot more complicated

Just treating a horizontal is a lot easier than a vertical. And there's also something called cyclotorion

and that's when it's not up or up and down or side to side

it's twisted and that is nearly impossible to fix you can't get prisms that are going to not

impossible to fix but like with vision therapy it makes it so much more challenging because you can't

fix that with prisms it just makes it very very complicated is it possible yes but it complicates

things a lot and so to avoid those kinds of problems definitely going with the vision therapy

first can avoid that and that takes us into my reason number three that I would do vision therapy first

and that's that the success rates will increase drastically if stereopsis is present

And what I mean by that is if your brain knows how to use your eyes together

then this is what happened for me. I my eyes were like this before I had surgery I through vision therapy I learned how to make my eyes straight I could bring that eye in I could see And when I brought my eyes straight I could see with depth

Now, it wasn't perfect stereo, wasn't perfect depth perception, but I had some stereo there

So that when the surgeon made my eyes completely straight, so I didn't have to force it straight

it was okay staying there because it knew what to do with those images. Now, I still had some hypertroval

from clear from childhood, but my brain didn't do anything too crazy because it was like

oh, now I can see with better stereo. And it's like motivating for my brain to keep my eyes

straight because my brain can use them together. So that's why vision therapy beforehand can be

so powerful because if you can teach your brain using prisms and different things, how to use

your eyes together. And let's say that your angle, is so high, it's just not, you're not getting all the way of vision therapy, then you can

have the surgery and help get those eyes closer to being straight and your brain won't reject

that position, hopefully, right? All of this is like, hopefully, it's increasing success rates, right

Instead of having a 65% success rate with surgery, it's going to be more like an 85% success rate

which is a huge difference. Are there still people who aren't, it's not going to work for

Yes, it's shribismus, right? It's just the worst. but we will overcome

Okay, and then the last reason that I would say to try vision therapy before surgery

is that if you ask any optometrist who practices vision therapy, they've seen so many different Strobismas patients

And a lot of them have had surgery prior, and a lot of them haven't had surgery prior, right

They've got both cases. And what you hear from every single one across the board

is that the vision therapy is much easier for those who haven had surgery yet There no scar tissue buildup there no weird stuff happening with the nerves and the muscles aren you know they just it like a little bit more of a clean slate to

start with. It's still possible after surgery, but they just all say it's easier before. If

if you can get a patient before they've had any surgery, success rates are a lot higher provision

therapy. So all of that being said, I think you can see that it's worth a try

there's not a lot of risks with vision therapy, right? If you do it on your own, yes, you can risk getting terrible double vision

and all sorts of crazy stuff. But if you're doing it with a vision therapy office

they are going to carefully go in an order that will help you

You're not going to get those negative side effects like permanent double vision and all the things that people will scare you with

They're going to do things in a different order that's going to get rid of that part of the risk

So it's very, it's risk-free. It is expensive. And that's one thing that a lot of people say is, well, my insurance cover surgery and it doesn't cover vision therapy

So that makes it obvious. And I get that. I totally understand

But if you have the means, I highly recommend even just going in for a consultation with a vision therapy office, you will be able to learn so much about your eyes and how they're working and get a better feel for what your success rates might look like for surgery

It's not going to do any harm just to go in for that consultation. It opened my eyes completely to a whole world I hadn't been aware of

So give it a try. Let me know how it goes in the comments. If you want help finding a vision therapy office, you can fill out a form if you go to

Strabismos Solutions.com slash find VT. Or if you go to that website I mentioned earlier, learn.stribismissolutions.com

and scroll down there is a link there as well. So let's get you set up, start with the least risky option, and then proceed from there

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