Brown's Syndrome

Brown's syndrome is a syndrome that usually occurs at birth or can occur with time. Cases of Brown's disease being originated through heredity are very rare. Other causes could come from surgeries, trauma to the eye, or conditions of chronic inflammation like rheumatoid arthritis or sinusitis.

The tell tale sign of Brown's disease is that an individual has an eye that looks strange whenever they look up or inward toward their nose. Now when you look at this picture you would think that the child's right eye (in anatomical view) is the one that is effected, but it is actually the child's left eye that is effected. With Brown's syndrome, the superior oblique tendon or muscle of the patients eye is unable to move around freely, due to hardening or inflammation of the tendon, and so the individuals lower eye is unable to look up freely. Something that I found interesting was from the website http://www.aapos.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=71 was that most individuals who have Brown's syndrome have this occur in their right eye. This is not true for this child in the picture above.

Some other symptoms that can occur and this is usually with severe cases is severe double vision, binocular vision is affected (the ability of both eyes to work together), or you start to notice that the patients head in comparison to where they are looking does not look normal.

There are different classifications of Brown's syndrome and it all depends on the severity of the eye. In the most severe of cases the individual will be looking forward and their affected eye will be looking toward the ground. In mild cases the affected eye will usually only be affected when the patient looks up, but in moderate cases the eye will start to appear to be looking down a bit when ever the patient looks in toward their nose.

The treatment of the patient will depend on the severity and origin of the Brown's syndrome. For the cases that are severe, patients will be advised to have surgery. For the moderate cases, medication can be given to reduce the inflammation of the tendon and hopefully give the tendon some more elasticity to move around freely. With the mild cases, parents and physicians will usually just monitor the child closely to make sure the condition does not worsen. In the cases where the Brown's syndrome is brought on by surgery or trauma, those patients may either need surgery to correct the issue or the condition may better itself with time.