Am Orthopt J  41: 102-109  (1991).

Acute Accommodative and Convergence Insufficiency

Malcolm L. Mazow, M.D.
Kathryn Musgrove, M.D.
Sandra Finkelman, C.O.

Reading easily and comfortably is of paramount importance in the intellectual development of the child and young adult. It is a relative facility of accommodation and convergence that allows the young person to read at a close range. When these mechanisms fail, reading becomes tiring, frequently producing headaches and even diplopia.

Asthenopia in a school-age individual can be a significant handicap to learning. An inability to concentrate on written material creates frustration, impeding the learning process. Once the refractive error has been corrected and the symptoms persist, evaluation of the patient for mechanisms of binocular dysfunction is carried out.

Convergence insufficiency syndrome is defined in a variety of ways. This abnormality includes remote near point of convergence and decreased amplitudes of convergence compared to divergence with poor recovery once fusion has been broken. These defects individually or in any combination, are enough to create symptoms. Over the past four years, we treated 26 young patients with asthenopic symptoms who had a combination of profoundly decreased accommodation and convergence in the absence of any other neurologic symptoms or signs. This retrospective study looked at this group to evaluate the relationship between abnormal accommodation and the findings of convergence insufficiency.

© 1991 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System