title: [Study on the effect of different disease courses on pre- and post-operative visual acuity in cases with congenital cataract].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To study the effect of different disease courses on the visual acuity of congenital cataracts.
  
  
  METHODS
  876 cases with five kinds of human congenital cataract have been studied.
  
  
  RESULTS
  It has been found that the preoperative visual acuity (VA) is closely related to the length of disease course. The longer the course of disease, the worse the VA. When the disease courses were shorter than one year, the most serious reduction of preoperative VA was found in the patients with congenital total cataract. When the disease courses were within one to four years, the most remarkable reduction of VA was found in patients with congenital dense nuclear cataract (CDNC). When the disease courses were longer than four years, except the congenital anterior polar cataract, the VA in all the other four kinds of cataracts were decreased significantly. It is indicated that the postoperative VA highly depends on the preoperative VA. In the group with disease courses shorter than one year, this relationship is the most remarkable. Some kinds of congenital cataract showed accelerated changes in preoperative VA, especially in the CDNC.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It is suggested that the key point to get better visual function in cases with congenital cataract should be to discover and treat the patients as early as possible.
authors.affiliation: Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002386:Cataract / Q000151:congenital* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002387:Cataract Extraction; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007432:Intraoperative Period; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D014792:Visual Acuity