title: Motor coordination in children with congenital strabismus: effects of late surgery.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Strabismus is one of the most common visual disorders in infancy. While there is a great attention on the effects of the timing of surgery as to the development of binocular vision, little is known about the possible influence of congenital strabismus on perceptual-motor and more generally, on neuromotor development.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Aim of this study was to investigate perceptual-motor and motor coordination abilities of 19 children with essential congenital esotropia who underwent a late surgery (after 4 years), compared to 23 age-matched controls.
  
  
  METHODS
  Children were tested using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (Movement ABC) that were performed both 1-week before surgery (T1) and about 3 months (+/-2 weeks) after surgery (T2).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  At T1, abnormal or borderline results were found in more than half of the children with strabismus, as opposed to only about 17% of the controls. At T2 none of the children showed abnormal Movement ABC total scores and there was no difference in global scores between the study and the control group. The two groups also did not show any significant difference in individual items of the movement ABC with the exception of those assessing ball skills. Our results suggest that surgical correction of strabismus, even when performed after the 4th year of life, appears to be effective in improving perceptual-motor and motor function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, A. Meyer Children's Hospital, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Caputo
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tinelli
authors.forename: Ada
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bancale
authors.forename: Luciana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Campa
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frosini
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guzzetta
authors.forename: Eugenio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mercuri
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cioni
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004948:Esotropia / Q000151:congenital* / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013508:Ophthalmologic Surgical Procedures; D011597:Psychomotor Performance