How to treat intermittent exotropia?

Hi,

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Intermittent exotropia is common in young people. One or both eyes go outward on and off commonly when they are inattentive, under stress or illness. But, if they got good fusion, then they keep their eyes straight by focusing on the target and can control exotropia. Intermittent exotropia can go as it is or can improve or sometimes, it decompensates with time and becomes permanent or constant exotropia. In early cases, orthoptic exercises can be helpful to enhance convergence of muscles like pencil tip exercise. The most important thing is to check refractive error correction. Your brother is now 16, but in young age, refraction is necessary to avoid amblyopia. In your brother's case, you have to decide how frequent your brother is having this problem. Usually for intermittent exotropia, surgery is not preferred until you can control your eyes. But, if it decompensates and becomes permanent or you feel fatigued, then you can get squint surgery. Squint surgery got good results. So, I would recommend you to go to your eye doctor and discuss all these and then decide what you want. He will do the best.