A fascinating yet challenging field, paediatric ophthalmology deals with the treatment of eye and vision related issues in underage children. Despite being challenging, the paediatric niche in medical science is rewarding and renowned sub-specialty in the eye industry.

The paediatric exam

Examining children is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks as they’re always on the move and typically dissuade doctors with special tools and machinery to even come near them. However, this doesn’t mean letting go of eye and vision related issues in the children that may lead to a much deeper anomaly if left untreated.

A paediatric ophthalmologist in Dubai has professional expertise in performing crucial eye examinations of the children and even infants with ease. Since calming children is difficult especially for longer, preliminary examination must be quick yet thorough that actually detect the root cause.

Vision testing depends on the patient’s age as infants tend to blink when exposed to light or perhaps follow facial expressions and movements if they’re one year older. This is the reason measuring quantitative vision in the young is challenging and thus focus is on asymmetry between the eyes.

Refractive error

To determine a child’s refractive error can be stimulating and concluding over myopic or hyperopic with improper chart reading is simply impossible. Here’s how a paediatric ophthalmologist in Dubai performs the examination;

• Bruckner test

A quick method is examination of the red-reflex which is the red-eye you get through the images. It takes on by holding a scope directly from a distance and releasing the shine so that the circular light is exposed to both pupils simultaneously.

A paediatric ophthalmologist in Dubai then carefully examines this red-reflex taken from each eye and assuming a patient’s looking in straight direction, the chart does give some clues to the anomaly. Low-grade crescents or curves indicatemyopia (near-sightedness) whereas superior or greater curves are a sign of hyperopia.

A certain degree of hyperopia is present in most of the children since their eyes are small and growing. This is the reason Bruckner test is excellent against identifying myopic (near-sighted) errors however the test results aren’t 100 percent accurate always due to undulation in the children. On the contrary, strabismus which is misalignment of the eyes may give very inaccurate results.

Retinoscopy

A much more accurate was to check the prescription is through Retinoscopy which is how a paediatric ophthalmologist in Dubai prescribes glasses for children. A beam of flashing light is exposed to the eye and moves to-and-fro which examines how light bounces off the retina. Different power lenses are placed in front of each eye to determine which focuses the light properly on the retina thereby neutralising the red-reflex. This is challenging yet useful even outside the realm of paediatric niche.

Amblyopia (lazy eye)

The decreased vision of the eye which occurs during childhood development is referred to as Amblyopia. Major causes or risk factors are genetic alterations, development delay and premature growth.

Conclusion

There’re many difference niches covered by paediatric ophthalmology however the basics are listed above.