One of the congenital vision problems that every person faces is astigmatism in a child under one year old. It is quite difficult to identify it in a baby who is not yet able to clearly describe his needs and nuances of sensations in words. But since physiological changes in the visual system occur by the age of 18-20, the key to he alth is the early diagnosis and treatment of disorders in the eye by non-surgical methods. Astigmatism in a 1 year old baby? What to do and what to pay attention to?
Description of disease
Astigmatism is the inability of the eye to focus light on the retina. The reason is the altered shape of the eyeball. Depending on what caused the pathology, which part of the eye has undergone the greatest changes, what image the patient receives, several types of the disease are distinguished:
- The cornea is curved. Visual defects are very pronounced, the patient cannot get a clear image of either distant or close objects.
- Disturbances in the lens are fraught with two types of visual distortions: myopia (myopic astigmatism)and farsightedness (hypermetropic astigmatism).
- Depending on the number and type of lesions, a simple type is distinguished (one eye suffers), complex (both eyes suffer from the same problem), mixed (there are disorders in both eyes, but the type of disease is different).
- The origin is distinguished: physiological (a slight violation, up to 1 diopter, passes by itself in the course of growing up), hereditary (genetic features of vision were present in blood relatives), acquired (occurs as a side effect in some bacterial diseases of the eyes, jaw or due to injury).
Disease classification
A disease in which there is a drop in vision by more than 1 diopter is subject to urgent treatment. At the same time, age is not a contraindication to treatment, since self-correction of vision is fixed only in the range of 0.5-1 diopter. The classification of the severity of the disease in the early stages (until satellite diseases appear) is carried out based on the severity of visual abnormalities:
- weak astigmatism - deviation up to 3 diopters;
- medium - 3 to 6;
- strong - more than 6 diopters.
It is worth noting that a baby can have congenital astigmatism of both weak and strong stages. The disease can progress only in less than 20% of cases. A form of progression of the disease can be the development of farsightedness or myopia.
Symptomatics in one-year-olds
It is the direct responsibility of parents to supervisechild. This is not about indulging whims, but about ensuring normal physiological and psychological growth. It is important, carefully monitoring behavior, to identify possible deviations in he alth.
The reason for examining an ophthalmologist in the first 3 months of life is the presence in the anamnesis of one of the blood relatives of vision problems, difficult births (including caesarean section), mother's illness during childbearing.
After the sixth month of life, they can alert:
- inability to concentrate vision on the subject;
- nausea and vomiting when trying to move independently;
- fuzziness of grasping reflexes (the child more often misses than reaches with his hand);
- when walking constantly looks under his feet, loses coordination;
- movements constrained, timid, general physical activity reduced;
- tilts head from side to side when looking at things;
- squints;
- cries often, complains of headaches;
- developmental lag is observed (inability to repeat a movement for someone, recognize an object), low independent cognitive activity.
A direct survey of a child is not carried out, since the data obtained can be highly distorted: the baby will confirm or deny everything in order to attract attention or not provoke manifestations of discontent on the part of parents. In addition, the baby always sees the world in his own way, he just does not know that there may be disturbances in his vision.
The list of these symptoms may also indicateother diseases, but a trip to the optometrist if at least 2-3 symptoms are detected is a must.
Causes of the disease
Often, astigmatism in a child under one year old is a feature of its prenatal development, although science knows the hereditary component of the disease.
In addition to genetic predisposition and physiological characteristics, it is worth highlighting at risk children who:
- there was an injury to the cornea, eyelid, jaw;
- suffered from a severe infectious disease in early childhood;
- there are other visual impairments, and astigmatism is just another consequence of a more serious condition.
It is difficult to foresee all the risk factors. It is desirable that even a child without "eye" symptoms should be examined by an ophthalmologist at the age of one.
Diagnosis of disease
This disease can be diagnosed only in the ophthalmologist's office, and not at home or at a pediatrician's appointment.
A one-year-old child is diagnosed with astigmatism based on behavior, retinoscopy results. The total time spent on diagnostic procedures is no more than 30-40 minutes. Increasingly, methods of complex computer diagnostics are being used, making it possible to determine not only the type of pathology, but also the specific physiological changes that caused it, a possible type of corrective methods.
Treatment of disease
Astigmatism is one of the diseases that can be eliminated withoutsurgical intervention. The optimal means for correcting vision will be glasses selected after careful research. With astigmatism in children of 2 years old, there may be an increased interest in playing with glasses, and not just wearing them. Moreover, the lenses have a rather large volume and a specific curvature. It is advisable that parents patiently accustom the baby to the adult form of treatment - glasses.
In case of astigmatism in a child of 2.5 years, additional means of correction can be nutrition and the use of vitamins, eye drops, which reduce the sensation of tension in the eyes.
Gymnastics for the eyes
Daily eye gymnastics is another component of he alth. The task of viewing distant and near objects with both eyes, in turn with one eye, will become a method of accustoming the brain to obtaining a normal image, as well as a game. This will help with astigmatism in a child of one and a half years and more. But if the child is older, additional measures are needed.
Features of wearing lenses
From 8-14 years old, special lenses can be used to correct the shape of the eye. They wear them at night. The age of use is due to several reasons:
- Up to 6-7 years, defects related to the size or shape of the eye are usually eliminated on their own.
- A child under the age of 7 can rarely resist physical impact on the lenses (rubbing, displacement), which can lead to mechanical injury to the cornea.
- In primary school and adolescence, everyonethere are still changes in the size and shape of the eye, so this type of correction will help to avoid surgery after 18 years.
Treatment of comorbidities
Treatment also provides for the elimination of concomitant eye diseases, training of nerve centers in the brain. The fact is that in the absence of treatment for astigmatism in a child of 3 years and later, the main brain ceases to qualitatively process information received from the eyes. The eyeball that gives a lower quality image is blocked by the optic nerves, may completely lose the ability to receive and conduct visual information.
You can prevent such a violation if you cover a he althy eye for several hours a day. In this case, the brain will have to compensate for the lack of information by more active use of the diseased eye. The task of such therapy is to prevent a radical deterioration in vision, to maintain a diseased eye at a stable level of work quality.
Possible consequences of the disease
Astigmatism, if left untreated, can lead to lazy eye syndrome, or strabismus. In 20 cases out of 100, there will be a permanent deterioration in vision in one or both eyes, up to complete loss of vision.
"Lazy eye" - the loss of the brain's ability to combine visual data from the eyes to get a clear picture. Most often, attempts to cover, squint one eye, palpable headaches, dizziness, nausea are added to the already existing symptoms.
Treatment consists of two parts: cessation of further processes of vision loss, restorative therapy.
Squint is not just a cosmetic defect. Behind it is the lack of volumetric vision, systemic deterioration of vision in both eyes, almost always - a sharp decrease in image quality in the squinting eye. Treatment includes different techniques, depending on the type of disease:
- wearing glasses, lenses;
- laser correction;
- surgery;
- constant physiotherapeutic procedures for the development and consolidation of binocular functions of vision.
Hyperopia and myopia
Hypermetropic astigmatism in a 1 year old child means poor vision at any distance. From a medical point of view, it is important to establish only the type of refraction and focusing of light beams in order to prescribe the correct treatment and wear lenses of the appropriate range.
Myopia always means poor clarity when distinguishing objects at a considerable distance, but, as with farsightedness, it is important to determine the degree of the disease. Lack of treatment of the last two pathologies is fraught with the development of strabismus, stable visual impairment.
Early diagnosis of astigmatism in a child under one year old helps prevent severe complications in the work of the visual sensory system.
Prevention of disease development
Birth defects modern medicine is not yet able to correct. Planning can help reduce riskchild from a genetic point of view. For example, the risk of having a sick child is higher in a couple where there are the same type of vision problems in several generations. If astigmatism can be traced only on the maternal or paternal side, then the risk of the disease in the baby is low.
During pregnancy, you should avoid exposure to chemicals as much as possible, eat a balanced diet.
Since astigmatism in a child up to a year old can also occur under the influence of external factors, they monitor:
- The quality of lighting in the room where the child spends the most time. The more natural sunlight, the better. The use of fluorescent lamps in a nursery or student workplace is unacceptable.
- The absence of violations of posture. Constant postures when playing, studying, violate not only the bone component, but also the possibility of good vision.
- The presence of different types of loads on the eyes. Constant contact with the phone, computer monitor (cartoons, games) must alternate (if it is not possible to completely exclude gadgets) with walks in the fresh air, focusing on objects of varying degrees of range.
- Performing physical education for the eyes.
- Timely treatment of infectious diseases.
- History of neurological symptoms.
- Timely correction of existing eye problems.
- Complex vitamin nutrition for a child.
- The absence of factors that directly damage the eye.
Remember, astigmatism is a very serious disease in children. The baby is waiting for the test anddifficulties in everyday life if the parents do not diagnose the disease in time and do not show the child to the doctor. For prevention, it is important from infancy to visit doctors according to the plan for a physical examination. In no case should you ignore such visits to the clinic.
No preventive measures can guarantee a 100% absence of astigmatism in a child's history, but with timely treatment, this disease becomes a temporary defect, and not a problem for life.
