Male1: A very common condition in young mother is they see a baby and they think one eye is not focusing with the other eye. It is a little bit off to the side. What is that thing called lazy eye or something like that?
Male2: Well actually, most people call it a lazy eye, but that is not actually the correct term. It would be a crossing eye or wandering eye. Lazy eye actually refers to when one eye does not see as well as the other and that can be caused by the eye wandering, but it can also be caused by a lot of other things. But when we have the eye wandering out or turning in, the medical term is strabismus for that, but when the eye is crossing and are wandering out that should be evaluated by a pediatric ophthalmologist in order to make sure that there is not any condition that either needs to be treated with glasses, with surgery or if there is a lazy eye, it might mean that one eye does not see as well, you also may need to be treated with patches and with patching the better seeing eye to force the child to use the worse seeing eye in order to straighten the vision in that eye.
Male1: If surgery has to be done, when is it usually considered.
Male2: Surgery needs to be considered any time after six months of age if it is needed. Probably it should be done within the first year when the eyes are crossing or wandering out and probably the sooner the better.
Male1: A sty?
Male2: A sty kind of is used to mean any bump on the eyelid, but medically, it refers to a condition on the outside of the eyelid, an inflamed gland. There is a very similar type of condition called the chalazion that happens on the inside of the eyelid. A sty can go away very quickly. It tends to go away in a few days if you treat it with warm compresses. Sometimes, they can get secondary infections and so sometimes, it needs some ointment or cream to put on the outside and very rarely will we be doing antibiotics if there is a secondary infection. However, chalazion, which is on the inside of the eyelids sometimes can last so much longer and sometimes people think that when the sty is not acting much longer that what is going on here, but maybe a chalazion. Still the primary treatment for both sties and chalazions are the innocuous warm compresses on the eye. You take a clean wash cloth or a paper towel, dip it in warm water and put it over the child’s eyes for about ten or 15 minutes, hopefully three times a day, but as long as you can get it at bedtime that might even be enough to see if that will help the sty and the chalazion drain and at that point, it will resolve.
These are both conditions of different type of glands in the eyelid getting clogged up and it is just that the primary treatment to unclog it is the warm compress. Rarely, the chalazion does need to be drained surgically if it does not go away on its own. Short surgeries sometimes, a steroid cream can be tried, additionally, it would be tried after warm compresses have been given a chance to work on their own.
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