Children's vision key to education

By FLOYD L. DAVIS, M.D.A
Fayette Eye Clinic

Education is of increasing importance in our booming and technologically advanced economy and is essential for young people who hope to succeed in today’s world.

A child’s inability to read with comprehension can be a major hurdle to his or her education. A child’s reading difficulty and inability to keep up with his or her classmates or to advance can be due to a visual deficiency such as myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism and not due to a lack of motivation or interest.

A child’s visual status is not fully formed at birth but continues to develop until the age of 6. Because of this, eye care professionals such as those at the Fayette Eye Clinic recommend a cycloplegic examination — an examination with dilating eye drops — for children at age 3 as an initial base line examination to rule out visual deficiency or eye pathology.

Of course, any infant who is having difficulty seeing large objects or a child with a protracted turning in or turning out of the eye should be seen promptly, no matter what age level.

One of the serious consequences of an untreated strabismus condition, or a turning in (esotropia) or turning out (exotropia) or the eye, is the resulting suppression of the double image by the visual center in the brain and the resulting amblyopia. Amblyopia is a condition of the eye in which there is no visible eye lesion, yet the vision in the involved eye is subnormal and will remain that way throughout life unless treated aggressively.

The most frequent eye deviation is esoptropia. Initial treatment consists of patching or occluding the straight or fixating eye so that the deviating eye will be forced to straighten to see objects viewed.

A cycloplegic refraction is mandatory for infants, children and teenagers. A cycloplegic is an eye drop to eliminate accommodation, which is an automatic action of the eye to contract the human crystalline lens and to turn the eye muscles in. Without cycloplegic drops the child’s visual deficiency will not be fully detected nor will the turning in or out of the eye be corrected.

If the child’s eyes show farsightedness (hyperopia) or nearsightedness (myopia) then corrective glasses are prescribed for full or part-time wear with regular visual and eye muscle checkups made. If the eyes are straight with the wearing of corrective glasses then conservative management is the usual treatment of choice. If on the other hand there is residual turning of the eyes with glasses on, then corrective eye muscle surgery is recommended, which consists of weakening or strengthening the eye muscles which are causing the turn.

Many students complain of headaches which are not relieved by the usual anti-headache remedies and may be due to straining to see the board because of myopia or straining to read caused by hyperopia. Another common cause of headaches is astigmatism or irregular image. These three conditions and the headaches can be relieved by the wearing of full-time or part-time glasses or by contact lenses.

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