Acquired esotropia (crossed eyes that develop after a child reaches the age of 6 months) accounts for 25 percent of all patients with misaligned eyes. Surgery to correct esotropia is done primarily to attain functional use of the two eyes together. The cosmetic aspect of the surgery is secondary. In 40 to 50 percent of cases, more than one operation is needed to accomplish the primary goal, and in some cases even three and four operations are needed.

Preliminary studies from two eye care centers reported that the use of prisms on eyeglasses for about a month before surgery led to good results after a single operation in more than 90 percent of patients. These uncontrolled preliminary studies pointed to the need for a multicenter, randomized, controlled clinical trial designed to prove or disprove scientifically the beneficial effect of prisms.

The Prism Adaptation Study was a double randomization trial involving 286 patients. Three-fifths of the patients were randomly selected for prism adaptation before surgery. Of the patients who responded to the prisms, one-half were randomly selected to have surgery based on the amount of prism required to stabilize the deviation, and the other half had surgery based on the amount of esotropia originally measured. Patients who did not respond to the prisms also had surgery based on the amount of esotropia measured, as did the two-fifths of the patients who did not undergo prism adaptation.

Patients were examined postoperatively at 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year. An independent examiner, masked to the treatment assignment, evaluated the patient at the 6-month followup. The results were analyzed to determine whether the outcome was better in patients who underwent prism adaptation or in those who underwent conventional treatment. Because the examiner did not know what type of treatment a patient had received, he or she would have no bias in evaluating the results.