Causes of Blindness and Visual Impairment in Early Childhood at a Low Vision Service in Mexico City: A 15-year Review

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To evaluate the causes of blindness and visual impairment in children aged 0–7 years attending a Low Vision Centre in Mexico City, Mexico.

Methods: Clinical records for patients aged 0–7 years attending the Centre from 2001 to 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Causes of blindness and visual impairment, affected anatomy, and suspected time period of insult were recorded.

Results: 1487 patients were included, 45.9% girls and 54.1% boys. Mean age of presentation was 39 months (SD 27.9 months). 36.0% had associated co-morbidities in addition to their ophthalmic pathology. 39.7% presented with developmental or psychomotor delay. Leading diagnoses were Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) (19.6%), optic nerve atrophy (11.5%), and congenital cataract (9.5%). The most affected anatomical regions were retina (33.8%), optic nerve (16.6%), and lens (10.5%). Half of all cases (50.9%) had insults in the prenatal period. Children with developmental delay were more likely to present before the age of one. There is a significant difference in risk of delayed presentation according to diagnosis. Only 13.5% of children with optic nerve atrophy presented to the Centre before the age of one, compared to 28.4% of children with ROP and 23.4% of children with cataract.

Conclusion: The most common diagnoses for blindness and visual impairment among children were ROP, optic nerve atrophy, and congenital cataract. Late presentation to the Centre was common. There were significant differences in risk of delayed presentation depending on diagnosis. Co-existing systemic conditions and developmental and psychomotor delay were also common among patients attending the Centre.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood blindness
• low vision
• visual impairment
• congenital cataract
• retinopathy of prematurity
• paediatric ophthalmology

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgements to the Low Vision Centre staff at CONVAL for providing assistance with the management of the files. Particularly Edna Guzmán, as her help was vital for the correct assortment of the documents.

Declaration of Interests

JALU – Declaration of interests: NONE

HB – Declaration of interests: NONE

AMB – Declaration of interests: NONE

Financial support

There was no financial support involved in the making of this study.

None of the following authors have any proprietary interests or conflicts of interest related to this submission.

Role of funding source

There was no source of funding for the current paper.

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Instituto de Oftalmología Conde de Valenciana.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.