According to Dr. P. Kay Nottingham Chaplin, Ed.D., “School Nurses and others involved in preschool vision screening, including Head Start staff, can help detect amblyopia early to help reduce the risk of impaired vision in the non-amblyopic eye in older adulthood.”
Introduction
It’s easy to consider the immediate impact that vision screening and treatment can have on a child and learning, but new research gives us another reason to screen for Amblyopia: better lifelong vision. According to recent research, Amblyopia nearly doubles the lifetime risk of losing vision in the better-seeing eye, and people with Amblyopia tend to live with vision loss longer than people without.
What is Amblyopia (Lazy Eye)?
From Loudon, Rook, Nassif, Piskun, and Hunter (2011):
Amblyopia, often referred to in lay terms as “lazy eye,” is preventable vision loss in a structurally normal eye that occurs in approximately 3%-5% of the United States population.1 It can be caused by misalignment of the eyes (strabismus), asymmetry of refractive error (anisometropia), or visual deprivation (occlusion, e.g., congenital cataract). Amblyopia develops during the maturation of the visual system, generally thought to take place up to 6 years of age.2 Early detection and treatment of amblyopia improves the likelihood that vision can be restored to normal. (p. 5043).
Why Early Detection and Treatment?
As mentioned above, we want to help ensure young children are prepared to learn at school. But we also want to reduce the risk of visual impairment in the non-amblyopic eye as the child enters into older adulthood where they may develop older adulthood eye disease such as age-related macular degeneration, cataract, and glaucoma.
What the Research Tells Us
Looking at 5,220 participants in the Rotterdam Study, with a mean age of 67.4 (range 55-95) years, van Leeuwen et al. (2007) found that the estimated lifetime risk of losing vision in the non-amblyopic eye (the better-seeing eye) was nearly double that of individuals without amblyopia. The Rotterdam Study, involving inhabitants of a middle-class suburb of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, started in 1990 as a population-based, prospective cohort study of the frequency and causes of common cardiovascular, locomotor, neurological, and ophthalmological diseases.
Amblyopia was diagnosed in 192 of the 5,220 participants for a prevalence of 3.7%. The estimated lifetime risk of impaired vision was 18% for individuals with amblyopia and 10% for individuals without amblyopia, and the expected period living with visual impairment was on average extended from 0.7 to 1.3 years (van Leeuwen et al., 2007).
SOURCE:
School Health Blog: http://blog.schoolhealth.com/bid/70988/Amblyopia-Screen-Now-To-Save-Vision-Later
Author: Sarah ZiethDate Posted: Nov 15, 2011
Date Taken: April 25, 2013 at 5:35pm
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