Many times parents think that children do not harbor any type of eye condition just because they have not received any complaints about it.
However, there are many eye diseases that manifest during the pediatric stage and that need early recognition in order to be detected, diagnosed and, in many cases, corrected.
Therefore, in order to guarantee an optimal state of health as well as good social development or suitable school integration, the correct state of the eyes must be prioritized by making an appointment with paediatric ophthalmology from God Service Eye Clinic!
The experience of going to the ophthalmologist with children
When a baby is born, a complete examination is performed, which includes an ocular evaluation in order to rule out certain congenital diseases. However, the vision of newborns undergoes many transformations, going from poor visual acuity to the development of binocular vision and an evolution in depth perception.
Thus, due to the large number of changes that the eyes go through in the human being before reaching maturity, it is imperative to carry out periodic examinations of children in which the correct evolution of their sense of sight is evaluated.
Despite this, many times both parents and children show some misgivings about going to a specialist, fearing that they will have to go through some kind of difficult or painful test to be able to detect an eye condition.
But nothing is further from the truth, since in pediatric ophthalmology there are specific tests adapted to develop different methods of analysis with which to obtain information about refraction, alignment, reflexes or ocular motility of the little ones.
Therefore, it is important that both parents and ophthalmologists work as a team and explain to the child in a simple way what they are going to do during the consultation. In this way, it will ensure that pediatric patients are not scared and show a more proactive and cooperative attitude.
Do you need a professional in children’s ophthalmology? More common diseases
While on some occasions the little ones in the house emit clear signals that alert parents and teachers that a vision defect is being experienced, on other occasions visual disorders during childhood go more unnoticed.
For this reason, attention must be paid to how a child behaves in some daily situations , because only in this way will he be able to know first-hand in what situations he complains of a headache , if he sometimes winks or if he feels more.
It is comfortable when it is very close to the television, since episodes related to refractive errors or optical correction problems usually originate in the pediatric stage.
Symptoms of astigmatism in children
People who have astigmatism often have children with the condition, so its onset is usually due to genetic reasons. When you suffer from astigmatism, the cornea experiences an irregular curvature on its surface, it stops being concave and takes an oval shape.
Consequently, a distorted vision of objects occurs, both at short and long distance, because when light falls through the cornea, distorted images are formed. Astigmatism in children usually manifests itself through itchy or red eyes, headaches, visual fatigue, the eye environment and multiple winks trying to focus the view.
But it should be said that on many occasions, thanks to the use of prescription lenses, this vision problem can be solved. Precisely for this reason it is so important to detect the symptoms of astigmatism in time.
Symptoms of myopia in children
Myopia is a vision defect that causes a blurred vision of the most distant objects. For adults it seems easy to identify, but nearsightedness in children can be more difficult to recognize.
Among the signs that can warn of this anomaly in the visual faculties of the little ones we can mention, for example, hypersensitivity to light, confusion between words or lines, the difficulty of following the tasks written on the blackboard, as well as the inability to identify faces or react to facial expressions.
Although also in this case the manifestation of myopia may depend on the genetic load that the child harbors, it is advisable to favor light exposure to sunlight as a method of preventing this condition.
Symptoms of farsightedness in children
Pediatric patients with this condition, unlike those with myopia, have good long-distance vision but do not see closer objects correctly. Farsightedness in children is the most frequent refractive error, but with glasses that have converging lenses, the focus of the eye can be redirected and an optical correction can be achieved.
When little ones experience this visual disturbance, they often suffer from hypersensitivity to light, excessive itching in their eyes, and excessive blinking. In addition, sometimes children suffer from esotropia at the same time, an alteration that causes the eyeball to deviate towards the nasal passage.
Other eye diseases that can affect children
Although astigmatism, myopia and farsightedness are the most common visual disturbances during the pediatric stage, other diseases that affect children’s vision can also be experienced, such as strabismus, dyschromatopsia or amblyopia. It is worth mentioning that blindness in children, although it occurs less frequently, is another of the possible alterations that can emerge during childhood.
In some cases the deprivation of sight originates during the gestation period, but in others it can start at a very early age. The symptoms that can help parents to identify blindness in children can be mentioned asymmetry in the pupils, aimless eye movement or special reaction to sounds.
Rare diseases in pediatric ophthalmology
In relation to the part of medicine that treats eye diseases, a distinction can be made, on the one hand, between those conditions that are directly linked to vision and, on the other, between other disorders that in their symptomatology, harbor alterations in the sense of the view.
In relation to pediatric ophthalmology, Amblyopia, Aniridia, Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy or Stargardt’s disease can be highlighted.
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