title: [Causes of blindness in students at the school for blind children in Ilvesheim. Changes between 1885 and 2008].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Since 1868, the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg has been providing care for the pupils of the school for blind and visually handicapped children in Ilvesheim, Germany. Previous studies on the causes of low vision have demonstrated the effects of the advances in medicine and ophthalmology with an explicit decrease in the number of inflammatory corneal diseases, followed by a reduced number of students suffering from congenital cataract and glaucoma. The aim of the present study was to evaluate current data and to compare it to previous data.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ophthalmological data and additional disorders could be evaluated in 268 students visiting the special education school Schloßschule Ilvesheim between 2000 and 2008. The findings were compared to the results of previous studies concerning the degree of visual impairment and diagnosis. The children were divided according to German social law into blind, severely visually handicapped and visually handicapped.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Out of the 268 students 83 (31.0%) were premature infants and 69 of these had additional disabilities, 130 were blind and 51 severely visually handicapped. Of the students 142 had additional learning, mental and/or motor handicaps. The most frequent cause of blindness or severe visual impairment was optic nerve atrophy (36.2 % and 37.3 %, respectively). The frequency of hereditary retinal diseases among the blind children was slightly higher with 24.6 % as compared to the data analysis from 1981 and was 15.7 % and 17.1 % among the severely visually handicapped and visually handicapped, respectively. Retinopathy of prematurity was diagnosed in approximately 20% of blind and severely visually handicapped children.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As a result of the enormous advances of medical capabilities during the last decades the number of (formerly) premature infants has markedly increased. Most of these students are multiply handicapped and need extensive assistance. While the number of students suffering from hereditary retinal diseases was only minimally increasing during the last 40 years, the number of blind students without additional disabilities has decreased due to the improved technical means to integrate even blind students into main-stream schools.
authors.affiliation: Ophthalmologische Rehabilitation, Univ.-Augenklinik Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 400, 69120 Heidelberg. kr@uni-hd.de
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rohrschneider
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mackensen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001766:Blindness / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D002386:Cataract / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015984:Causality; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D005901:Glaucoma / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D007634:Keratitis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D012307:Risk Factors; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019987:Persons with Visual Disabilities / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*