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Over the last fifty years we can see a clear decline in Strabismus surgery rates carried out in the United Kingdom.Just over half a million procedures were completed on British children up to the age of fifteen between 1963 and 2010. The British Journal of Opthalmology has reported that the surgery rate has dropped from 189 per 100,000 children in 1968 to just 64 per hundred thousand in 2010.Regional variants were a large factor and the biggest decrease was in the drop between the seventies and nineties.The report suggests that a fraction of the difference were because areas of deprivation reported higher numbers of children having surgery.
The best explanation of the decline in surgery rates for strabismus would be that a radical switch in treatment from surgery to non invasive treatments and procedures has prevaled. Many eye doctors are detecting cases far quicker thanks to regular screening programs and it is not to be ruled out that variants in when cases are referred to surgery may have impact on the figures.