[Retraction syndrome (author's transl)].

A report on 70 cases of retraction syndrome (Stilling-Türk-Duane). The patients presented with typical symptoms: severe limitation of abduction, slight limitation of adduction and convergence, which is always accompanied by retraction of the globe, narrowing of the palpebral fissure, vertical deviation and elevated intraocular pressure, and a remarkable motility of the globe in the orbital axis. All symptoms are explicable by fibrosis or coinnervation of the lateral rectus muscle. Usually, single binocular vision is present with or without a forced attitude of the head. This forced attitude is such that the affected eye utilizes the reduced abduction fully and does not avoid the abduction (as in typical abducens-paresis), but retraction. In cases of single binocular vision, surgery is indicated only when the forced attitude of the head is intolerable. We restrict surgery to recession of horizontal rectus muscles according to the forced attitude.