Association of symptoms and convergence and accommodative insufficiency in school-age children.
BACKGROUND
The purpose of this article was to investigate the association between convergence insufficiency (CI) and accommodative insufficiency (AI) and symptoms in a group of school-aged children.


METHODS
Children ages 8 to 15 years were recruited from two public and 2 private elementary schools in Southern California. The CI Symptom Survey (CISS) was administered to all children before a Modified Clinical Technique vision screening. Children with normal visual acuity, minimal uncorrected refractive error, and no strabismus were tested for CI and Al.


RESULTS
Four hundred sixty nine children were initially screened and 392 participated in testing for CI and AI. Fifty-five percent of the children (218) were classified as having normal binocular vision (NBV), 4.6% (18) had three signs of CI, 12.7% (50) had two signs of CI, 10.5% (41) were classified as AI (with no signs of CI), and 16.6% (65) were classified as other. The symptom score was 3.78 for the NBV group, 4.6 for the two-sign CI group, 6.67 for the three-sign CI group, and 6.37 for the Al group. The three-sign CI and the Al groups scored significantly higher than the NBV group on the CISS (p < or = 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
CI and AI are common conditions in school-age children and are associated with increased symptoms.
Borsting
Eric
E
Southern California College of Optometry, Fullerton, California 92831, USA. eborsting@scco.edu
Rouse
Michael W
MW
Deland
Paul N
PN
Hovett
Steve
S
Kimura
Dan
D
Park
Mark
M
Stephens
Brian
B
D000065:Accommodation, Ocular; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003290:Convergence, Ocular; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012574:Schools; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015351:Vision Screening; D015348:Vision, Binocular; D014792:Visual Acuity