Visual impairment in Swedish children

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The analysis of etiological factors in a group of visually impaired children is of considerable importance when trying to find guidelines for possible preventive work. In this study we present etiological data on 2373 Swedish children. Data have been obtained by reviewing medical records on all known children with visual impairment throughout the country. In accordance with similar studies from industrialised countries, the group with prenatal etiology was the predominant, comprising 64% of the material. Within this group, half the patients had a disease of genetic origin. A total of 50% of all patients with prenatal etiology had an additional impairment, but in the group with diseases of genetic origin this proportion was smaller, only 40%. On the other hand, many children with additional impairments were found among those with an unspecified prenatal influence. Peri-/neonatal etiologies were found in 20% of the patients. In this group as many as 83% had additional impairments. This was even more pronounced among children delivered at term. The group with infantile/juvenile etiologies was small, 7%, with additional impairments in 66%. In 9% of all patients the etiology was classified as unknown. Among these, 80% had additional impairments. The visual impairment tended to be more pronounced, the later the disease was acquired. A male preponderance was seen in most etiological subgroups and in the material as a whole.

Recent trends in visual impairment and blindness in the UK

“…Furthermore, temporal trends in absolute risk are unlikely to be area specific, unless our population suffers from a substantially different range of causes of visual impairment than the rest of the UK. Again this seems unlikely as the distribution of causes, anatomical sites affected (data not shown) and the proportion of isolated cases were broadly similar to those found by Rahi and Cable3 in the UK and other researchers in Scandinavia 20 24. The longitudinal nature of our data collection and mortality information allowed us to document the risk of death associated with visual impairment.…”

A novel method of notification to profile childhood visual impairment in Scotland to meet the needs of children with visual impairment

“…Therefore, many (13%) were categorized as 'prenatal unspecified/unknown'. These findings are broadly in line with previous population-based incidence and prevalence studies in the literature (Blohme and Tornqvist, 1997a;Mervis et al, 2000;Rahi and Cable, 2003) and underline that with current knowledge and techniques most causes of childhood visual impairment are neither preventable nor treatable. It is clear therefore that current efforts to habilitate children with visual impairment lie predominantly in developing optimum educational environments and teaching methods that are relevant to their thresholds of vision and learning ability.…”

“…Very little data was available on childhood visual field loss (16%); however, our findings were comparable in frequency (18%) to a study from Sweden (Blohme and Tornqvist, 1997a) and emphasize that a significant number of children have visual impairment due to visual field loss as well as decrease in visual acuity.…”

Blindness and low vision in The Netherlands from 2000 to 2020—modeling as a tool for focused intervention

“…Causes of blindness and low vision in subgroup 0-14 were provided by the same registers and by a study from the United Kingdom. [10][11][12] Prevalence data on the subgroup 15-49 are scarce. 13 The latest WHO estimate for blindness in Western Europe is 0.1%.…”