Some ophthalmologists favour an early surgical approach as offering the best prospect of binocularity whilst others remain unconvinced that the prospects of achieving this result are good enough to justify the increased complexity and risk associated with operating on those under the age of one year. Incomitant esotropia
Incomitant esotropias are conditions in which the esotropia varies in size with direction of gaze. They can occur in both childhood and adulthood, and arise as a result of neurological, mechanical or myogenic problems. These problems may directly affect the extra-ocular muscles themselves, and may also result from conditions affecting the nerve or blood supply to these muscles or the bony orbital structures surrounding them. Examples of conditions giving rise to an esotropia might include a VIth cranial nerve (or Abducens) palsy, Duanes syndrome or orbital injury. Diagnosis
Classification
Right, left or alternating
Someone with esotropia will squint with either the right or the left eye but never with both eyes simultaneously. In a left esotropia, the left eye squints, and in a right esotropia the right eye squints. In an alternating esotropia, the patient is able to alternate fixation between their right and left eye so that at one moment the right eye fixates and the left eye turns inward, and at the next the left eye fixates and the right turns inward. This alteration between the left and right eye is mostly spontaneous, but may be voluntary in some cases.
Where the degree of hyperopia is large, the child  may not be able to produce clear vision no matter how much extra-accommodation is exerted and thus no incentive exists for the over-accommodation and convergence that can give rise to the onset of esotropia. However, where the degree of error is small enough to allow the child to generate clear vision by over-accommodation, but large enough to disrupt their binocular control, esotropia will result. Only about 20% of children with hyperopia greater than +3.5 diopters develop strabismus.Where the esotropia is solely a consequence of uncorrected hyperopic refractive error, providing the child with the correct glasses and ensuring that these are worn all the time, is often enough to control the deviation. In such cases, known as fully accommodative esotropias, the esotropia will only be seen when the child removes their glasses. Many adults with childhood esotropias of this type make use of contact lenses to control their squint. Some undergo refractive surgery for this purpose. A second type of accommodative esotropia also exists, known as convergence excess esotropia. In this condition the child exerts excessive accommodative convergence relative to their accommodation. Thus, in such cases, even when all underlying hyperopic refractive errors have been corrected, the child will continue to squint when looking at very small objects or reading small print. Even though they are exerting a normal amount of accommodative or focusing effort, the amount of convergence associated with this effort is excessive, thus giving rise to esotropia.