Undiagnosed eye problems in babies and young children can affect early learning as well as physical and emotional development.

That’s why experts, including the American Optometric Association, recommend that children receive their first eye screening at 6 months and their first formal eye exam at the age of 3-1/2.

“They don’t need to verbalize or know the alphabet,” said Merrimack optometrist Kevin Chauvette, who specializes in children’s vision therapy, a subspecialty of optometry.

Chauvette, who owns and operates Merrimack Vision Care, said a trained practitioner can identify nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism in an infant or young child, information that can be used to treat and prevent future problems.

“We’re trying to get the word out about the six-month screening,” Chauvette said. “A lot of parents just don’t know, and they depend on the school or the pediatrician to tell them what to do.”

Chauvette isn’t faulting anyone for the gap.

Screening recommendations for children are relatively new, he said, having been established about a decade ago.

Like other preventive health-care measures, he added, vision screening has been slow to catch on.

“The problem with vision is a lot of things can go wrong with the eyes that don’t cause pain,” the optometrist said. “If they don’t have pain or blurriness, people assume everything is OK.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

For example, adults who have glaucoma, a disease that causes blindness, must undergo eye-pressure testing to confirm the condition. Otherwise, they will have no idea they are losing peripheral vision a little at a time.

By contrast, eye screening for children can identify eye problems that, left untreated, can lead to amblyopia or lazy eye, learning disabilities, behavior problems and other consequences, Chauvette said.

He said children who rub their eyes excessively, skip over short words, lose their place or cover one eye when reading may have vision problems. The same goes for the child whose handwriting is sloppy and disorganized.

During a baseline exam, Chauvette said he looks for symptoms such as a crossed eye or an eye that drifts outward, conditions that can be treated and corrected using a patch, eyeglasses or vision therapy.

“Children’s eyes change rapidly, and studies show that 80 percent of what is learned in the classroom is through the sense of vision,” he said, explaining why experts recommend annual eye exams for children after they start school.

Children’s eye exams are different from those given to adults.

“We look for factors that lead to lazy eye, the ability to learn at school,” Chauvette said, linking vision to both academic and social success. “Of kids having difficulties, a dramatically high percentage has underlying eye problems.”

He said experts believe that an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is to blame.

“Children are not outside playing. They’re looking at a computer, a flat world. They have more visual problems because they’re not interacting with a world in three dimensions, which is a necessary part of vision development,” Chauvette said.

In treatment, children are asked to accomplish complex tasks that require peripheral and central vision, as well as balance and motor skills. For example, a child might be asked to balance on a rail while tossing a ball.

“There’s almost nowhere in the brain where, if you make an incision, it doesn’t affect some part of vision,” Chauvette said, adding that vision influences balance, posture, memory and emotion.

Furthermore, a child identified with a learning disability has a 50-50 chance of having an undiagnosed vision problem, he added.

“If you intervene early, it’s fixable, treatable. It can be reversed,” Chauvette said of conditions that left untreated, can lead to failure in school and a constellation of social and personal problems.

Only about a third of all children have had an eye examination or vision screening prior to entering school, according to the American Optometric Association.

Nashua optometrist Ann Irwin, for example, said she has referred children for vision therapy and is pleased that state officials are talking about requiring an annual eye exam for all children before they begin school, similar to mandates for vaccinations and medical and dental exams.

Whether a child has vision problems, or is suspected of having them, Irwin said, she reminds parents to protect their child’s eyes.

“Children need sports goggles and sunglasses,” she said.

Source: Nashua Telegraph, NH
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