Esotropia is most successfully treated when diagnosed early in children. That said, adults who develop the condition—or who have had it since childhood—can also usually be treated successfully or at least achieve improvement. It’s easy to find self-treatment advice for crossed eyes online, but esotropia is a medical condition that needs a proper medical diagnosis and treatment plan.
Your eye doctor will ask about your symptoms as part of their diagnosis, so write down your findings and bring them with you to your appointment.
As part of the diagnostic process, expect to undergo various eye tests and exams and be asked questions about your symptoms and family history. While esotropia is the most common cause of crossed eyes, it’s possible you may have another condition. While rare, brain tumors can cause one or both eyes to cross, for example.
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Some cases of esotropia are caused by severe farsightedness. If so, corrective eyewear alone can often address the problem. “Prism” lenses are a special kind of eyewear with a noticeably thicker lens for your weaker (crossed) eye. The prism effect of the lens refracts the light in order to guide your eye into the proper positioning. Over time, your eye may re-learn to use this proper position all the time.
Vision therapy sessions may happen at an optometrist or opthamologist’s office, or at a specialized vision therapy center. You might use prism lenses, filtered lenses, eye covers, and specialized computer programs during vision therapy, to name some common examples. You may even utilize balance boards or metronomes as part of your personalized exercise program. Vision therapy is essentially physical therapy for your eyes. And, like physical therapy, it’s critical that you attend your sessions regularly and give a full effort each session.
Ask your eye doctor if this is an appropriate treatment for you, and only get injections from a medical professional who is trained to use Botox for medical (not cosmetic) eye care purposes. Only certain cases of esotropia are good candidates for Botox injection therapy. It’s not a good fit, for instance, if your crossed eyes are caused by under-active eye muscles.
Eye muscle surgery has a fairly high success rate and carries a fairly low risk. You’ll likely have to keep your eye dry for at least 3 days, but you can typically resume normal activities otherwise within 1-2 days.
Keep in mind that this is just one part of an overall medical treatment strategy. Simply wearing an eye patch on your own is unlikely to successfully treat esotropia.
Don’t try to cure esotropia by doing only orthoptics exercises you found online. Use orthoptics as part of your physician-directed treatment plan.
Possible medications include (but aren’t limited to) atropine or miotics (to alter the weaker eye’s refraction) and levodopa or citicoline (to impact your overall vision system). Make sure that medicated eye drops actually make it into your eye! Ask for instructions from your eye doctor if you need assistance.
