Screening for amblyogenic factors in preschool children with the retinomax hand-held refractor: do positive children have amblyopia and is treatment efficacious?
OBJECTIVE
To determine the visual acuity (VA) in a group of preschool children who were true positives for refractive screening (positive group) in order to compare it with the VA of a sample of children without any refractive anomaly (control group); also, to investigate if true-positive treated children can achieve the VA of the control group within what delay.


METHODS
Fifty seven children without any refractive anomaly were tested with the VA child chart if the Nidek SCP 670 projector; 47 children presenting with the refractive anomalies were tested with the same chart. A Kruskal Wallis exact test for singly ordered tables were used to compare VA between those groups and a non-parametric Wilcoxon test for paired samples was used to compare pre- and post-treatment VA in 27 children of the positive group. The mean time necessary to achieve the post-treatment VA was calculated.


RESULTS
Median VA: 20/20 in the control group, 20/33 in the positive group. The VA difference between the two pre- and post-treatment VA are highly significant. Among the 27 treated children, pre-treatment median VA was 20/50, post-treatment 20/20. The differences between the pre- and post-treatment VA was 9 months.


CONCLUSIONS
The positive group had a significantly lower VA than the control group. In the treated group, treatment initiated at a mean age of 4 years resulted in an increase in VA to that of the control group after an average time of 9 months, encouraging early screening and treatment before VA is measureable in order to shorten this delay.
Cordonnier
M
M
Ophthalmology department, Hôpital Erasme, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. mcordonn@ulb.ac.be
de Maertelaer
V
V
D000550:Amblyopia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003941:Diagnostic Techniques, Ophthalmological / Q000295:instrumentation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012029:Refraction, Ocular; D012307:Risk Factors; D015351:Vision Screening / Q000379:methods*; D014792:Visual Acuity