VISUAL IMPAIRMENT IN CHILDREN - PREVALENCE, ETIOLOGY AND CARE, 1976-85

Visual impairment (corrected visual acuity in the best eye < 0.3) was evaluated in a retrospective study of 296 children born between 1976 a nd 1985 and recruited from three French departments. For children youn ger than 9 years, the overall prevalence was 0.80 per 1000 and that of blindness was 0.28 per 1000. No decrease in prevalence was noted over this decade. The most common aetiologies were antenatal factors (48%) , which were observed mainly in the cases of poor vision, and perinata l factors (27%), which were more common in the cases of blindness. Fif ty-six per cent of the children had an additional severe handicap. The most common association was with motor impairment and mental retardat ion. The mean age of first medical care (3.1 years) did not change ove r the decade: 2.0 years for children with an associated handicap, 2.9 years for cases of isolated blindness and 5.1 years for cases of isola ted poor vision. Among children with isolated visual impairment, there was a significantly higher percentage of scholastic underachievers in those presenting after the age of 5 years (39.3% vs. 14.6%).