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Case of the week 163  ( March 2014 )

Dissociated Vertical Deviations ( DVD )




this 6 years old girl was noticed by her mother  to have one eye is sometimes higher than the other. The condition started since 1 year . She is otherwise healthy child passing good at school. Examination reveals bilateral normal fundus, also, cycloplegic ref. is within normal.


 See video of this patient
 

 

Dissociated Vertical Deviations ( DVD )

(DVD) is the most least understood of all forms of strabismus, DVD is an elevation of one eye when the patient is fatigued or daydreaming or when fusion is interrupted by covering one eye. When the cover is removed, the elevated eye will move slowly downward towards the primary position.

Other features may be present with DVD, these include extorsion of the elevated eye and intortion of the fixating eye, when the elevated eye returns to the primary position it intorts. Observation of the conjunctival vessels will nearly always reveal intortion as the elevated eye returns to the midline.

 DVD is totally different from hypertropia. In a patient with right hypertropia, for example, the right eye is elevated when the left eye is fixating or the left eye is depressed when the right eye is fixating. While, in DVD, either eye elevates when the fellow eye is fixating. DVD may be bilateral or may be restricted to one eye.

Therapy

Patients with DVD are usually asymptomatic, however, when the patient is daydreaming or fatigued, the elevated eye may disfiguring to the patient. In that case surgery may be considered. Personally I have not observed DVD in adults as often as in children, I share many authors that DVD tends to improve with time.

Surgical procedures for DVD are :

(1) Recession of the SR combined with resection of the IR

(2) Resection of the IR

(3) Faden suture (posterior fixation) of the SR  combined with or without a recession.

(4) Large recessions (7 to 10 mm) of the SR.

(5 ) Anterior displacement of the IO insertion, which may be combined with SR recession.

The debate about whether surgery should be performed in both eyes in cases of unilateral DVD. It is not uncommon and quite disappointing to have a patient return after surgery in one eye with a DVD in the fellow eye. However, since in my experience this does not happen in every case of unilateral DVD, I operate on both eyes only when a DVD is present in both eyes.




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