This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Study: Better visual outcomes from bilateral cataract surgery in children

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Among pediatric cataract surgery patients, older children and those treated bilaterally both achieve significantly better final visual outcomes, a retrospective study shows. Also, amblyopia is responsible for most cases of poor final visual acuity, the study authors noted.

Danielle M. Ledoux, MD, and colleagues reviewed results of 139 eyes of 139 children who underwent cataract extraction with primary IOL implantation at a mean age of 5.12 years. Follow-up averaged 3.65 years, and all children were aged at least 4 years at the time of last follow-up, according to the study.

Of the 139 children, 66 (47.5%) had undergone unilateral cataract surgery. The remaining 73 children (52.5%) received bilateral procedures, and the researchers only included data for the right eye for these cases, the authors noted.

The study also had excluded children with traumatic cataract, retinopathy of prematurity, severe developmental delay or who underwent secondary IOL implantation, they said.

Overall, children achieved a median visual acuity of 20/30. However, patients treated bilaterally had a median visual acuity of 20/25, which was significantly better than the median visual acuity of 20/40 for patients treated unilaterally, according to the study.

Also, older children achieved significantly better visual outcomes. Children aged 1 year or younger at the time of surgery had the lowest final visual acuity, which averaged 20/320 among unilateral patients and 20/30 among bilateral patients. Children aged 8 years and older had the best final visual acuity, which averaged 20/30 for unilateral cases and 20/25 for bilateral cases.

Overall, 45 children had a final visual acuity below 20/40. "Of these, 34 (76%) had a diagnosis of amblyopia as the sole cause," the authors said, noting that 18 children required strabismus surgery and 22 required additional intraocular surgery.

The study is published in the June issue of Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus.