NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Findings published in the Archives of Diseases in Childhood--Fetal and Neonatal Edition support previous observations that adolescents who were born with very low birthweights have poorer visual outcomes compared with their normal-birthweight peers.
Children with very low birth weights (less than 1,500 grams) make up a mixed group of premature infants. Some are born with weights smaller than expected based on the length of pregnancy, and others have a birth weight within the range expected for the length of pregnancy, Dr. Kerstin Hellgren, of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and colleagues point out. "Within this group, different mechanisms of visual disturbance have been reported."
In the current study, the researchers evaluated the vision of 59 adolescents with a very low birth weight and 55 similar teens of normal birthweight.
Along with statistically significant impairments in vision among the teens who had very low birthweights, the researchers also found that this group had an increased risk of learning disabilities.
Of the 57 very low birthweight teens who underwent MRI examination, 17 had abnormal findings. The teens with abnormal MRI findings "had more pronounced visual and cognitive dysfunction," Hellgren's team reports. And of those with impaired vision, half had brain abnormalities and one third had learning disabilities.
SOURCE: Archives of Diseases in Childhood--Fetal and Neonatal Edition, July 2007.
