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Infants with reduced occipital brain volume at higher risk for visual impairment
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Premature infants with smaller volume in the occipital region of the brain are more likely to have impaired oculomotor control in early childhood, according to a study by Australian researchers.
Divyen K. Shah, MB, ChB, and colleagues at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne studied 68 children born after 23 to 33 weeks' gestation. The researchers obtained occipital brain MRIs when the children reached full-term equivalent age.
Comprehensive orthoptic evaluations performed when the children reached 2 years of age identified 24 children with abnormal oculomotor control, including abnormalities in saccadic eye movement, smooth pursuit and binocular alignment. These children all had smaller bilateral inferior occipital brain tissue volumes than infants with no ocular abnormalities, according to the study.
The study is published in the August issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.