More than half of the apparently healthy children, after having passed a conventional eye evaluation, presented visual dysfunctions when they underwent a second specific pediatric visual screening and an optometric visual screening performed with advanced technology.
The conclusions of this study, carried out by the Department of Pediatrics of the Terrassa Health Consortium on 200 children, call into question the tools used and the visual evaluation time dedicated to each patient in primary care consultations, taking into account account that more than 50% presented problems related to binocular vision and visual reading skills.
These dysfunctions "can significantly influence the concentration, comprehension and reading abilities" of children, says Abel Martínez, head of Pediatrics at the Consortium. In his opinion, pediatricians lack the time to perform comprehensive and accurate vision assessments.
In the study, the doctors carried out tests in the eight primary care centers of the Consortium in case they had to refer the patients to the ophthalmologist to wear glasses or if they had any anatomical problem that affected vision. "In parallel, they passed the Wivi protocol and compared the results," explains Martínez. “We compared those that we would have sent to the specialist with the traditional method and those that we sent with Wivi”.
This protocol detected numerous alterations that had been missed. It is based on a technology developed in Spain that helps to measure up to 50 parameters of five visual areas in 12 minutes and analyzes whether the person presents visual dysfunctions. Dysfunctions that the system can help to correct in a few months through personalized 20-minute training sessions with 3D video games.
According to Juan Carlos Ondategui, co-founder of Wivi and professor of Optics and Optometry at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the British public health system has become interested in pediatric visual screening because it understands that the detection of certain dysfunctions at an early age facilitates their treatment and cure and supposes "a reduction in health expenses for the treatment of these cases in children and young people".
According to specialists, conventional tests on visual efficiency in pediatric consultations have a wide margin for improvement, which must be covered because visual acuity problems influence learning.
Dr. Martínez considers that the protocols for examining the visual health of children in primary care are too subjective, as suggested by the results of the study. “We wanted to know if, through the detection used in the public system, we could refer all the patients who required it to a specialist,” he points out.
Despite the underdetection discovered, the visual pediatric protocols in Spain, especially those of Catalonia and Cantabria, are considered to be among the most effective. But the more specific and objective evaluations through the Wivi system allow fine-tuning. "These are not severe pathologies that have been diagnosed in the investigation, but things that are treatable and correctable in 95% of cases," says Dr. Mertínez.
