China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
An Approach to Visual Loss in a Child
Published in Vivek Lal, A Clinical Approach to Neuro-Ophthalmic Disorders, 2023
Muhammad Hassaan Ali, Stacy L. Pineles
Various studies have shown that many causes of childhood blindness are preventable or treatable if detected early. Low vision aids and visual rehabilitation should be offered to all the individuals whose pathology is unlikely to benefit from any medical or surgical treatment. Causes of childhood blindness are classified according to the anatomical site or the underlying pathology. For this chapter, we divide the causes into prenatal, perinatal and postnatal causes. Prenatal causes are the diseases which can occur from the time of conception till delivery, postnatal causes affect during or after delivery and perinatal causes affect the fetus from 28th week of gestation to 1–4 weeks after birth. Some of the major conditions that can develop during these periods are discussed below.
Eye disorders
Published in Janet M Rennie, Giles S Kendall, A Manual of Neonatal Intensive Care, 2013
Janet M Rennie, Giles S Kendall
If a cataract is seen in the neonatal period, urgent ophthalmic referral is indicated, particularly for bilateral disease, to prevent amblyopia developing. Cataract is the most common cause of preventable childhood blindness. Many cases are genetic and further investigation is indicated.
The Problems of Undernutrition
Published in R. J. Jarrett, Nutrition and Disease, 1979
In the last few years an imaginative approach has been tried out in several countries for the prevention of xerophthalmia. This approach is based on the fact that vitamin A is a depot vitamin and it should therefore be possible to fill the depot. After several field trials it has been found that a dose of 200,000 i.u. of vitamin A in oil given orally is tolerated well. When administered every six months such a dose is able to maintain adequate tissue stores and protects against xerophthalmia. Laboratory studies with labelled vitamin A have shown that about 47 per cent of the orally administered dose in oil is retained in the body. Observations in communities with well developed programmes of mass prophylaxis have shown a significant fall in the incidence of ocular manifestations of vitamin A deficiency. Several countries have now adopted this method for the prevention of childhood blindness.
Age at recognition and age at presentation for surgery for congenital and developmental cataract in Kazakhstan
Published in Annals of Medicine, 2022
Aliya Kabylbekova, Serik Meirmanov, Altyn Aringazina, Lukpan Orazbekov, Ardak Auyezova
Delay in presentation for surgery is common for developing countries [5–7]. The median delay in presentation for surgery in children with congenital/developmental cataract in our study was significantly longer (15 months) than delay in presentation for cataract surgery from developed country with maternity-ward eye screening protocol [15]. More than a half of children presented for surgery a year and later, after parents had noticed a cataract. This finding is comparable to recently reported finding from Tanzania where 52.5% of children underwent surgery with a lag time of ≥ 12 months [20]. Even though the age at surgery and delay for presentation for surgery is decreasing over time in our population, there is still need for implementation of health care strategies to ensure the timely surgical intervention to prevent the development of childhood blindness due to preventable reason.
Blindness Secondary to Retinopathy of Prematurity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Published in Ophthalmic Epidemiology, 2022
Scott K. Herrod, Adedayo Adio, Sherwin J. Isenberg, Scott R. Lambert
Despite these limitations, our methodology is similar to other studies determining the occurrence of different etiologies of blindness.40 In the United Kingdom, Rahi and Cable41 determined the causes of childhood blindness by having doctors report patients who were diagnosed as severely visually impaired or blind. In the United States, Steinkuller et al.4 determined the causes of blindness through mailing surveys to schools for the blind. In New Zealand, Chong et al.42 estimated the prevalence and etiologies contributing to childhood blindness through a retrospective review of the medical records of students in a national blind and low vision network. Our study estimated the occurrence of blindness from ROP throughout sub-Saharan Africa by surveying ophthalmologists. Through this method, we estimated the burden of blindness secondary to ROP throughout sub-Saharan Africa and identified many additional sub-Saharan African countries, beyond the literature, where ROP is a contributor to childhood blindness.
A novel CRYGC E128* mutation underlying an autosomal dominant nuclear cataract in a south Indian kindred
Published in Ophthalmic Genetics, 2020
Dinesh Kumar Kandaswamy, K. Vasantha, Jochen Graw, Sathiyaveedu Thyagarajan Santhiya
Childhood blindness poses a serious threat in view of the blind years and visual morbidity of the affected children. Worldwide estimation shows that around 1.42 million children are blind, and ~18 million children are with low vision, ~19 million children are visually impaired, and ~ 5,00,000 children become blind every year among which 90% of them are from developing countries (1). Congenital cataract is the leading cause of reversible blindness in childhood. The average incidence of congenital cataract is 1.8–3.6/10,000 births per year globally (2). In a meta-analysis on global epidemiology of congenital cataract, it has been reported that the prevalence of congenital cataract ranges from 2.2 to 13.6 per 10,000 children globally, of which the highest prevalence was estimated in Asia (7.43/10,000) followed by the United States (4.39/10,000), Europe (3.41/10,000), and Australia (2.25/10,000) with an upward trend reported since 2000 (3).