August 31, 2015 • SATURDAY
The new school year is just about to start and the Portuguese Society of Ophthalmology (SPO) stresses the importance of early detection of vision problems of children. Maria João Square, chairman of the SPO, recommends conducting visual surveys at three years of age and before the start of the school year.
Peter Menéres, board member of the SPO, said in a statement that “being refractive errors (myopia , farsightedness and astigmatism) the most common eye problems in this age group, amblyopia (or lazy eye) and strabismus turn out to be more serious. Is that ampliopia, for example, can not be treated after seven, eight years age, warning Catarina Paiva, the Portuguese Group coordinator for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus of the Portuguese Society of Ophthalmology. It is estimated that about one in five school-age children has visual function deficits caused by one of these diseases and not all receive help they deserve. “
The specialist of SPO warned it could happen one eye to see well and the other is partially sighted or blind and almost everything can go undetected until the day of screening. Ie a child with only one good eye may not notice any difference because it was never prompted to do so.
It is not always easy for parents, family and teachers notice the lack of vision of a child, but Pedro Menéres warns that some symptoms undergo: approach too much and constantly to things to see better, closing or covering one eye, errors in writing, itching, headaches, red eyes or watery and estarbismo or photophobia (difficulty in supporting the light). For the ophthalmologist, the ideal situation was to pass to create a national screening program, in order to avoid amblyopia in all children from the first year of age.
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