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Invited Commentary
October 2017

Population-Based Incidence of Strabismus: Why Is It Important?

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
JAMA Ophthalmol. 2017;135(10):1053-1054. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2017.3123

Torp-Pedersen et al1 reported that the cumulative incidence of strabismus at age 7 years in Denmark among a cohort of nearly 100 000 children born between 1996 and 2003 was 2.5%, and the most common type of strabismus was accommodative esotropia. Furthermore, they reported that the incidence of esotropia in Denmark is more than 5 times greater than the incidence of exotropia. Exotropia had a median age of disease detection of 17 months vs 32 months for accommodative esotropia. These findings are similar to what has been previously reported in other population-based studies of strabismus, such as the Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease study and the Baltimore Pediatric Eye Disease study.2 However, population-based studies of strabismus from Asia have reported a much higher incidence of exotropia compared with esotropia. In a population-based study of preschool children in Eastern China, the prevalence of exotropia was nearly 6 times greater than esotropia.3

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