Postural control in children with strabismus: Effect of eye surgery

► Control of posture is a complex multi-sensorial process relying on visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems. ► Strabismus surgery affects temporarily postural stability in children. ► Sensory adaptation changes could reach normal postural stability via adaptive mechanisms that can occur after longer delay from the surgery. ► A postural measure is an interesting tool to examine further motor and sensory adaptations in children with strabismus. The purpose of this study was to examine the postural control in children with strabismus before and after eye surgery. Control of posture is a complex multi-sensorial process relying on visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems. Reduced influence of one of such systems leads to postural adaptation due to a compensation of one of the other systems [3]. Nine children with strabismus (4–8 years old) participated in the study. Ophthalmologic, orthoptic, vestibular and postural tests were done before and twice (2 and 8 weeks) after eye surgery. Postural stability was measured by a platform (TechnoConcept): two components of the optic flux were used for stimulation (contraction and expansion) and two conditions were tested eyes open and eyes closed. The surface area of the center of pressure (CoP), the variance of speed of the CoP and the frequency spectrum of the platform oscillations by fast Fourier transformation were analysed. Before surgery, similar to typically developing children, postural stability was better in the eyes open condition. The frequency analysis revealed that for the low frequency band more energy was spent in the antero-posterior direction compared to the medio-lateral one while the opposite occurred for the middle and the high frequency bands. After surgery, the eye deviation was reduced in all children and their postural stability also improved. However, the energy of the high frequency band in the medio-lateral direction increased significantly. These findings suggest that eye surgery influences somatosensory properties of extra-ocular muscles leading to improvement of postural control and that binocular visual perception could influence the whole body.