Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to F D Ellis.
Two children developed evidence of subcutaneous fat atrophy after corticosteroid injection of periocular hemangiomas. The atrophy appeared at the site of injection and followed the expected course of lymphatic channels to the vicinity of regional lymph nodes.
A retrospective and prospective study evaluated the clinical characteristics of patients with inadvertent incorporation of the inferior oblique muscle to the lateral rectus muscle after lateral rectus surgery. Nineteen cases were included in the study (12 retrospectively in the preceding 18 months and 7 during the prospective 5-month period). Thirteen cases with the inferior oblique inclusion occurred after a lateral rectus resection and 6 occurred after a lateral rectus recession. Most patients demonstrated a vertical deviation in the affected eye preoperatively. Nine had hypotropia and 8 had hypertropia. Deficient elevation in adduction in all patients was found on motility testing. After reoperation, despite freeing the inferior oblique from the lateral rectus, most patients had a persistent vertical deviation. Inadvertent inferior oblique inclusion can be avoided by inspecting the under surface of the lateral rectus and freeing any inferior oblique attachment before reattaching the lateral rectus to the globe during either resection or recession.
Presumed accidental corneal exposure to Hibiclens (chlorhexidine 4% and detergent) in two patients resulted in severe and permanent corneal opacification. We investigated the corneal toxicity of Hibiclens by gross, biomicroscopic, and histopathologic studies of rabbit eyes exposed to Hibiclens for varying time intervals ranging from five to 15 minutes. Severe, irreversible, and progressive corneal damage resulted in all eyes studied.
We reviewed the records of 38 consecutive patients who had persistent binocular diplopia after cataract surgery. The patients were divided into ten categories based on the suspected conditions underlying the diplopia. Of 16 patients who underwent strabismus surgery, five achieved the therapeutic goal of single binocular vision in the primary and reading position, and four attained this with prismatic or botulinum toxin therapy in addition to surgery. Seven patients continued to have diplopia despite strabismus surgery and adjunctive therapy. Even small residual deviations were often intolerable, because of highly diminished fusional amplitudes.
We have studied a mother and son with a previously apparently undescribed syndrome of microcephaly, eye defects, small ears, mild mental deficiency, and short stature. The syndrome appears to be an autosomal or X-linked dominant trait. The cat eye syndrome, blepharophimosis or Kohn-Romano syndrome, Rieger syndrome, and other disorders are discussed in relationship to this entity.
A muscle sleeve fashioned from polyglactin 910 Vicryl mesh was used in a rabbit animal model to evaluate its efficacy in decreasing postoperative adhesions encountered in extraocular muscle surgery. Clinical observations, as well as gross and histological comparison of the experimental and control groups, revealed a significant reduction in postoperative adhesions under conditions of normal surgical trauma. Where there was extensive trauma, however, no significant reduction was observed. No evidence of toxicity of the material to ocular tissues was found.
We used electro-oculographic recordings of eye movement responses to a dynamic random-dot stereogram to assess stereopsis in normal infants and in infants with congenital esotropia. Normal infants showed an onset of stereopsis at about 4 months of age, consistent with previous reports. Four of nine infants with congenital esotropia demonstrated stereopsis when tested within two weeks of surgical alignment. No patient with congenital esotropia showed evidence of stereopsis when tested at a postoperative interval of more than two weeks.
Random-dot stereograms were found to be capable of producing fusional vergence amplitudes in the absence of monocular contours. These vergence amplitudes are not an artefact of monocular contours provided by the target borders or test instrument and are comparable in range to vergence amplitudes measured clinically with second degree fusion targets in an amblyoscope. We conclude that diplopia of monocularly recognisable contours is not necessary for producing fusional vergence amplitudes.
In an attempt to learn whether esotropia is present at birth or develops later in infancy, we observed 1,219 alert infants in a normal newborn nursery at a city hospital. Of these, 593 (48.6%) had orthotropic findings; 398 (32.7%) had exotropia, 40 (3.2%) had esotropia (intermittent in 17 with 14 varying between esotropia and exotropia and nine with a variable esotropia), and 188 (15.4%) were not sufficiently alert to permit classification. No infant displayed typical signs of congenital esotropia. We concluded that congenital-infantile esotropia is not connatal but rather develops in the first few weeks or months after birth.
Five patients developed esotropia in the remaining eye after unilateral enucleation in the first few weeks to months of life. Esotropia was associated with a face turn toward the opposite side and abduction nystagmus with a null point in extreme adduction. Our experience with these patients supports the reflexogenic theory for the development of a type of congenital-infantile esotropia. An intact globe-ocular muscle relationship, even in a blind eye, may have a stabilizing effect on the fellow eye in the first few weeks to months of life, and this should be considered before enucleation is done.
Evaluation of 1,910 first-, second-, and third-grade students indicated that visual function and academic performance as measured by reading were not positively related. Visual function tests included visual acuity, muscle balance, preferred eye and hand, color vision, refraction, sensory and motor function, and a writing and drawing task. Academic tests included the Metropolitan Readiness Test, the Cognitive Abilities Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and the teacher's assessment of reading level. A simple test which can be completed during the office visit and interpreted by the ophthalmologist in the office included drawing, copying, and writing. A segment of this test, the "draw a bicycle test," can be used by an ophthalmologist to demonstrate the difference between vision and performance when examining a child up to third-grade level who is referred because of school failure.
Branchio-oto-renal (BOR) syndrome is a developmental complex presenting with various combinations of ear pits, branchial cleft cysts, deafness and renal anomalies, which is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait. This report describes a father and 2 children with BOR syndrome in which gustatory lacrimation (GL) was also present in 2 of them. GL is considered to be a rare, non-hereditary type of anomalous, cranial nerve-end organ innervation. Since lacrimal stenosis, which can clinically mimic GL, is also a feature of the BOR syndrome, future reports require lacrimal reflex testing and duct patency evaluation to define this variation in the BOR phenotype.
Thermal sclerostomy (the Scheie procedure) was performed on nine eyes with congenital glaucoma and corneal cloudiness. The intraocular pressure was controlled and the cornea cleared in six eyes, though two required a second sclerostomy for success. In two of the remaining three eyes the intraocular pressure did not fall to normal levels, but the cornea cleared sufficiently to permit goniotomy, which was successful in each case. The remaining eye failed to respond to two sclerostomies. Thermal sclerostomy is recommended as a primary form of treatment in cases of congenital glaucoma in which corneal opacification makes goniotomy unsafe. While trabeculotomy is useful in these circumstances and may be the procedure of choice in many cases, thermal sclerostomy is recommended for the surgeon who is more familiar with this technique and for cases in which distortion of the anterior chamber angle is expected to preclude trabeculotomy or goniotomy.
The ocular reactions to caterpillar hairs are diverse in nature and location, ranging from a toxic reaction to the external foreign bodies, keratoconjunctivitis or the formation of conjunctival nodules, to intense iritis, vitritis or papillitis. Four cases are presented in this paper to illustrate the various degrees of ocular involvement. Included are clinical photographs of intravitreal and subretinal hairs. A classification of these reactions is suggested to facilitate the choice of treatment.
Botulinum A toxin in a dose of 5.0 X 10(-4) micrograms was injected into the vitreous of eight rabbit eyes. An equal volume of normal saline was injected into the fellow eye as a control. External examination, intraocular pressure, ophthalmoscopy, electroretinography, and light microscopy showed no significant difference between toxin injected and control eyes over a two-month period.
A review of 38 eyes of 24 patients receiving filtration surgery for childhood glaucoma is presented. A total of 54 procedures were performed, including both thermal sclerostomies and trabeculectomies. Successful control of intraocular pressure was obtained in 20 eyes (52%). Average follow-up time was four years, two months. Filtration surgery is seen as a useful technique in the treatment of childhood glaucoma when goniotomy fails. It also is useful in those conditions where the success rate of goniotomy is expected to be low.
This study determined the incidence of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in 2,958 admissions to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, Indianapolis, between January 1976 and December 1979. Among 2,484 survivors, acute ROP developed in 72 (2.9%); 60 (83%) of these newborns had birth weights of less than 1,500 g. The incidence of acute ROP among survivors with birth weights of less than 1,000 g (28%) was approximately three times that of the survivors with birth weights between 1,001 and 1,500 g (10.1%). The overall incidence of blindness was 4.5% of surviving infants less than 1,000 g and 1.2% of those surviving with birth weights of 1,000 to 1,500 g. Evidence of the strong influence of immaturity and low birth weight on the risk of development of ROP is reaffirmed. Increasing survival of the most susceptible infants may be the factor contributing most to the overall incidence of ROP.
We used a neutral density filter to assess motor responses in the fixation patterns of 25 patients, ranging in age from 5 to 54 years, with strabismic amblyopia. Shifts of fixation back to the preferred eye occurred when the visual acuity of the preferred eye through the filter was marginally better than that of the amblyopic eye. Thus, we were able to correlate the level of the filter at which this shift occurred with the level of amblyopia. This technique may be particularly helpful in the examination of preliterate children and in monitoring the progress in the treatment of amblyopia.