Postural Dysfuctions and Strabismus: Correlations

Purpose: Patient with strabismus may assume a compensatory posture. Posturology treats patients with abnormal head position through the stimulation of foot, ocular and stomatognathic receptors. As an alternation of one or more receptor occurs, the tonic postural system seeks to carer for this problems by adopting compensatory postures (scoliosis, abnormalities of distribution of the podalic load, abnormal head position). The extrinsic eye muscles, the head, neck and tongue muscles arise from the occipital somites: probably this explains the relationship between the ocular misalignment and abnormal posture. The objective of this work is to evaluate the relationships between oculomotor e postural defects.

Methods: N = 47 patients received a comprehensive ophthalmologic and orthoptic examination. They underwent baropodometric and stabilometric examinations.

Results: Our sample group included 37 patients with exodeviation, 17 patients with esodeviation. We observed: flat foot with an incidence rate of 83.33% (25 out of 33) in exotropic subjects; pes cavus with an incidence rate of 16.66% (5 out of 30) in exotropic subjects; flat foot with an incidence rate of 23.52% (4 out of 17) in esotropic subjects; pes cavus with an incidence rate of 76.47% (13 out of 17) in esotropic subjects. Clinical physiatry observation of patients with Eso/Exo deviations prove a considerable turn-out of postural disorders: lumbar scoliosis (76.47%).

Conclusions: In our sample, patients with exodeviation have flat feet (83.33%); the subjects with esodeviation have pes cavus (76.47%). However, there is a widely recognized need for a further extensive study and evaluation of the results obtained regarding binocular vision and posture.