Squint

Squint is a misalignment of the two eyes so that both the eyes are not looking in the same direction. This misalignment may be constant, being present throughout the day, or it may appear sometimes and the rest of the time the eyes may be straight. It was then called intermittent.

The exact cause of Squint is not really known. The movement of each eye is controlled by six muscles. Each of these muscle acts along with its counterpart in the other eye to keep both the eyes aligned properly. A loss of coordination between the muscles of the two eyes leads to misalignment. This misalignment may be the same in all directions of gaze, or in some conditions the misalignment may be more in one direction of gaze, e.g. in Squint due to nerve palsy.Sometimes a refractive error hyper metropia (long sight) may lead to inward deviation of the eye. Poor vision in an eye because of some other eye disease like prolonged cataract, etc. may also cause the eye to deviate. Therefore it is important in all the cases of Squint, especially in children, to have a thorough eye check up to rule out any other cause of loss of vision.

A child would ignore the image coming from the deviated eye, and thus sees only one image. But in the process, he loses the depth perception. This suppression of the image from the deviating eye results in poor development of vision in this eye, which is known as Ambylopia or Lazy Eye. Squint in children should never be ignored or it may lead to permanent damage to the visual apparatus.Since an adult cannot ignore the image from either eye, and therefore has double vision. This can be very annoying and may interfere with work.