Surgeons may have rethink the way they operate on children with crossed eyes, or strabismus. This is thanks to the discovery by Joseph Demer, Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles of the orbital pulley system. Using MRI and cadaver dissection, Demer found that each extraocular muscle consists of a global layer contiguous with the tendon and that inserts into the eyeball, along with a similar-sized orbital layer forming the extraocular muscle's pulley, which controls the eye's movement. Demer described the orbital pulley system at a recent conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "This is a revolution in how we think the muscles rotate the eyes," commented conference co-chair R. John Leigh, neurologist at University Hospitals of Cleveland and the Louis Stokes Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "We have to rethink entirely the way...

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