- With Mayo Clinic emeritus ophthalmologist
Dennis Robertson, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
Dennis Robertson, M.D.
Dennis Robertson, M.D.
Dennis M. Robertson was born in South St. Paul, Minn., and grew up in a musical family on the Mississippi River. He completed his undergraduate and graduate training at the University of Minnesota, where he received a B.A., B.S. and M.D.
Following an internship at San Bernardino County Hospital in California, he worked for two years on Indian reservations under the umbrella of the U.S. Public Health Service. He later completed a residency in ophthalmology at Mayo Clinic and pursued postgraduate fellowship training in vitreoretinal disorders at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. He returned to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he worked as a consultant from 1967 until retiring from clinical activities in December 2007.
His studies included a sabbatical during 1987 and 1988 at Moorfields and St. Bartholomew’s hospitals in London. His scientific interests have been chiefly in disorders of the retina and vitreous and ocular oncology. In 1999, he became the recipient of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Professorship.
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Question
Convergence insufficiency: What causes it?
My 16-year-old daughter has struggled with reading since grade school. Recently, I read an article on convergence insufficiency, and I think my daughter has some of the symptoms. How is this vision problem diagnosed and treated?
Answer
from Dennis Robertson, M.D.
Convergence insufficiency occurs when your eyes don't turn inward properly when you focus on a nearby object. When you read or look at a nearby object, your eyes should turn inward while you focus, so you can see a single image. But if you have convergence insufficiency, you need to use extra effort to move your eyes inward for focusing. This extra effort results in various symptoms, including eyestrain.
This condition is most frequently diagnosed in adolescence. Some parents of children with convergence insufficiency may think their child has a learning disability because of this condition. However, learning disabilities aren't usually caused by convergence insufficiency. If you think your child may have convergence insufficiency, look for some of its signs and symptoms:
- Eyestrain
- Headaches
- Difficulty concentrating
- Squinting, rubbing, or closing one eye
- Blurred vision
- Difficulty reading (words seem to float on the page)
- Double vision
Your child's doctor or eye doctor will need to do a special eye-focusing test to see if your child has convergence insufficiency, since it may not be detected in a brief annual eye exam. Convergence insufficiency is sometimes treated with eye-focusing exercises, although your child's doctor may prescribe special glasses in some instances. Surgery is often a last resort.
Doctors at Mayo Clinic and across the country are currently participating in a study to determine if different eye-focusing exercises can effectively treat convergence insufficiency in children ages 9 to 17. The study is sponsored by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
