In the morning email I found a PracticeUpdate piece https://www.
This follows another, in my view, irritating study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.
Why am I so irritated in such a nice, kind, familial time of the year? It has to do with binocularity-caring optometry’s lack of response in the arena of intermittent exotropia research.
Depending on how we define ixot, I suspect most vision therapy optometrists treat ixot pretty commonly. And, with a complete therapy program, I suspect vision therapy is effective maybe 80% of the time getting ixot patients to being straight 80% of the time. Those numbers are right out of the air, but in my experience don’t seem that far off for ixot. These people will probably always have something go on when they’re tired or ill.
Doing surgery for ixot? Cut up some eye muscles when the eyes aren’t even constantly out of line? In your best professional wisdom brought from higher educational training, give someone a No. 2 pencil to watch to treat a problem that obviously has a sensory component? What are “doctors” thinking?
Alignment in one study is achieved about a third of the time, and it looks like satisfactory outcome is at about 50% in the other. Do we do better? Can we together show we do better – in a truly multi-center study. We could even call it a crowd-study.
It’s time for us to respond. Please expect something in the future from OEPF. Please consider contributing a case study. Imagine what numbers we could come up with if we got cooperation from many of the therapy doctors who will read this.
Are there limitations on such a study? Sure. But neither of the studies I’ve mentioned are perfect either. The most recent one shows no understanding of the “placebo-ness” of pencil pushups for goodness sake.
Everyone have a great holiday. I’m feeling a little better having spouted off. Please start thinking about how you might participate.
– Eric Hussey
