Photoscreening supercedes traditional screening in accuracy, time management

WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Because photoscreening for ocular abnormalities was found to be more effective than traditional screening in preschool-aged children, April A. Salcido told surgeons here they should re-evaluate their traditional screening methods.

“The outcomes of this study should generate intense scrutiny for traditional vision screening of children aged 3 or 4,” Ms. Salcido told attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus.

In the multicenter 1,520 patient-based study, researchers found photoscreening to be a more time-efficient method, with a standard mean administration time of 2.83 minutes as opposed to 5.49 minutes with the traditional screening methods established by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Most significantly, she said, researchers discovered that the predictive value positive rate differed greatly in the 605 patients who were photoscreened compared with the 447 patients who were tested with traditional methods.

“We were shocked to discover that 78% of patients who were photoscreened were found to have amblyogenic factors, whereas none of the children in the traditional screening group were found to have these tendencies, when in fact they did,” Ms. Salcido said.