Spontaneous Blinking Kinematics in Patients Who Have Undergone Autogeneous Fascia Frontalis Suspension.

PURPOSE: To measure spontaneous blink metrics and brow motion in patients with congenital ptosis operated with frontalis slings with autogenous fascia lata.

METHODS

An infrared three-dimensional video motion analyzer was employed to simultaneously measure brow motion and spontaneous blinks of 17 patients with congenital ptosis who underwent frontalis sling with autogenous fascia lata and a control group of equal number of healthy subjects. A customized software identified and quantified the amplitude and maximum velocity spontaneous blinks eyelid and brown motion during a 5-minute observation of a commercial movie. The corneal status of the patients with and without lagophthamos was evaluated with slit-lamp biomicroscopy with fluorescein staining.

RESULTS

Lagophthalmos was detected on 13 (76.5%) patients. Out of these 3 (23%) showed signs of inferior superficial keratopathy despite the presence of normal (upwards) Bell's phenomenon in all of them. Blink rate was significantly diminished in the patients. The distribution of interblink time was similar in both groups. The mean amplitude of the down-phase of the patients' blinks was only 38% of the controls. The main sequence slope of the patients' blinks was abnormally low. In controls brow motion was a minute and random event no related to blinks. In the patients, the mean brow amplitude was five times higher than in controls reaching 45% of the blink amplitude.

CONCLUSIONS

Spontaneous blink amplitude and velocity are severely impaired in patients with fascia lata autogenous slings. After surgery blinking amplitude is linearly related to the amplitude of brow motion.