The Psychological Impact of Strabismus: Does the Angle Really Matter?

1. Saurabh Jain¹
2. Ailsa Ritchie¹
3. Patricio Colapinto²

¹Royal Free Hospital, London, UK
²Whittington Hospital, London, UK

Purpose
The psychological impact of strabismus on adults is well recognised. We wished to study the factors that determine the magnitude of this effect.

Methods
51 patients were recruited from the adult strabismus clinic, including 27 females and 23 males. After obtaining informed consent, patients were asked to fill in the psychological impact score (PIS) questionnaire, which has been previously validated for strabismus. We correlated the score against the age, sex, largest angle of horizontal and vertical deviation, visual acuity of the worse eye and the presence of diplopia.

Results
The average horizontal deviation was 33.7 PD (SD= 20.4 PD) and the mean vertical deviation was 6 PD (SD=7.6 PD). The mean psychological impact (PI) score was 23 (SD= 48). There was no statistical correlation between the maximum degree of horizontal strabismus and PIS (p value= 0.473), between the maximum angle of vertical strabismus and PIS (p value= 0.154), between age and PIS (p value=0.516), between sex and PIS (p value = 0.756), between presence of diplopia and PIS (p=0.7) and between visual acuity of the worse eye and PIS (p value = 0.861).

Conclusions
The psychological effect of strabismus does not appear to be related to the patient's age, sex, visual acuity in the worse eye, presence of diplopia or angle of strabismus.