Free
E-newsletter
Subscribe to Housecall
Our weekly general interest
e-newsletter keeps you up to date
on a wide variety of health topics.
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffConvergence insufficiency occurs when your eyes don't turn inward properly while you're focusing on a nearby object. When you read or look at a close object, your eyes should converge — turn inward together to focus — so that they provide binocular vision and you see a single image. But if you have convergence insufficiency, you won't be able to move your eyes inward to focus normally.
Convergence insufficiency is usually diagnosed in school-age children and adolescents. Convergence insufficiency can cause difficulty with reading, which may make parents or teachers suspect that the child has a learning disability, instead of an eye disorder. Treatments are usually effective for convergence insufficiency.
- Lavrich JB. Convergence insufficiency and its current treatment. Current Opinion in Ophthalmology. 2010;21:356.
- Scheiman M, et al. Non-surgical interventions for convergence insufficiency. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2011;(3)CD006768. http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews. Accessed May 27, 2011.
- Convergence insufficiency. American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. http://www.aapos.org/terms/show/38. Accessed May 27, 2011.
- Serna A, et al. Treatment of symptomatic convergence insufficiency with a home-based computer orthoptic exercise program. Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. 2011;15:140.
- Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial Study Group. Randomized clinical trial of treatments for symptomatic convergence insufficiency in children. Archives of Ophthalmology. 2008;126:1336.
- Scheiman M, et al. Treatment of convergence insufficiency in childhood: A current perspective. Optometry and Vision Science. 2009;86:420.
- Scheiman M, et al. Vision therapy/orthoptics for symptomatic convergence insufficiency in children: Treatment kinetics. Optometry and Vision Science. 2010;87:593.
Find Mayo Clinic on