This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Early surgery recommended for vitreous hemorrhage in neonates
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Dense hemorrhages in the vitreous of neonates may require early intervention to prevent later visual problems, a study here suggests.
Dense hemorrhages persisting in the neonatal vitreous for 4 weeks or longer appear to cause axial myopia and severe amblyopia, the study found.
Brian Mohney, MD, studied four infants with dense unilateral vitreous hemorrhages in the first weeks of life. Three of the four infants underwent successful lens-sparing vitrectomy between 3 and 6 weeks after onset of the hemorrhage. All three patients developed axial myopia and dense amblyopia during a follow-up of between 16 and 38 months. The three patients had a mean ocular axial length difference of 3.45 mm between the affected and the unaffected eye.
A fourth child, in whom the dense hemorrhage cleared on its own after 11 days, had a mild myopic error in the involved eye but no significant increase in axial length.
The study is published in the December issue of Journal of AAPOS.