Change Of Eye Position According To Dominant Eye And Dominant Hand Under General Anesthesia

1. Seung Hoon Kim
2. Jee Wook Kim
3. Song Hee Park

Department of Ophthalmology, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Purpose : We studied change of eye position according to dominant eye and dominant hand under general anesthesia in orthophoric and strabismus patients.

Methods : The subjects were 30 strabismus patients and 35 orthophoric persons who underwent surgery under general anesthesia. In each group, best corrected visual acuity, dominant eye, fixating-nonfixating eye and dominant hand were measured preoperatively. After general anesthesia, we measured the eye position by photographic measurement of the corneal reflex positions. Comparing the difference of both eyes, deviated eye was determined. Statistical analysis was performed among dominant eye, dominant hand and deviated eye.

Results: The mean difference of preoperative visual acuity between right and left eye was 0.06 in strabismus group and 0.27 in orthoporic group. There was a significant difference only in orthoporic group(p=0.01). 87% in strabismus group and 91% in orthoporic group had right hand dominance. In strabismus group, the nonfixating eye showed larger divergence than fixating eye in all of the patients. In orthophoric group, among patients revealed worse visual acuity in the right eye, 86% of the patients showed larger right side deviation. In the patients who revealed worse visual acuity in the left eye, 75% of the patients showed larger divergence to the left side. There was a significant difference (P=0.01). The dominant hand had no significant effect on dominant eye and deviated eye under general anesthesia.

Conclusions : The nonfixating eye and the eye with lower visual acuity may have a decisive effect on the side of deviation under general anesthesia.