Furthermore, it is very rare for a patient to undergo a single operation. Even when a compound surgical procedure is adopted, frequently this has to be repeated one or more times because the operation by its very nature has such a high potential for inaccuracy. The first operation may reduce the deviation, or cause one in the opposite direction, so that another operation has to be done just to correct the error of the first one or repeated several times before the eye appears straight.

In performing such an operation the surgeon is confronted with a most delicate task, and it is not possible to accurately forecast the result. Often the first operation is not expected to completely correct the deviation; the surgeon will deliberately operate in stages, rather than attempting to do it all at once. This has to do with the scale of the surgery. The eyeball is a globe of less than one inch in diameter. Changing the position of the insertion of a muscle by only one millimeter will change the position of the eye by approximately 5 degrees of arc. Most operations are performed to correct deviations this slight. Even when the most accurate apparatus possible is used with the highest level of skill and experience, the kind of accuracy called for is too high to ensure success. Apart from this, the healing process can completely upset even the most superior surgical job. The fact that the eyes may appear straight after an operation or series of operations does not mean that the two eyes are working together correctly and giving normal binocular vision.

Every time an eye muscle is cut and sutured in a different position, the delicate circuit connections feeding the group of muscle fibres that have been cut no longer remain in circuit with the cells of the nuclei in the brain stem, the photoreceptors in the retinae, or the brain cells in the visual cortex or motor cortex. This means that the delicate mechanism designed for providing eye balance and movement is irreparably disrupted.

For the past half century I have been consulted by a large number of patients who have been operated on for squint and who experienced very serious trouble because they were unable to move their eyes correctly or change fixation with comfort. Many patients experienced double vision whenever they attempted to move their eyes from the straight ahead position.

In every case of squint, the patient or parent should never consent to surgery before a thorough trial of nutritional orthoptic therapy. That never harms the eye functions, but invariably improves them, whereas surgery always permanently destroys at least part of the delicate visual mechanism, and frequently causes far more trouble than does leaving the strabismus alone. Often the parent is too anxious to straighten a squint in a child when he is young in the mistaken belief that nothing can be done later. Many cases of strabismus have been cured by the nutritional approach even after many years, whereas with surgery, the normal binocular vision is very unlikely ever to be restored.

Dangers of Using Corticosteroids

Another area where I've have seen cases in which serious damage has been done to the eye is with the use of steroid and cortisone eye drops. In a number of cases the cortisone drops cause the pupil to be fully dilated and paralyzed, and so intolerant to light. The outsized pupil size (often in just one eye) is also disfiguring. And some cases even after the drug had caused the damage, it was still being prescribed!