Swedish researchers find that premature babies are more likely to have visual problems at 10 years of age than full-term babies.
Eye and neurological problems are common in premature babies, but little is known about the effects of prematurity on visual acuity, the sharpness or clarity of vision.
Uppsala University Hospital researchers studied 10-year-old children in Stockholm County, including 216 who'd been born prematurely, in order to assess how premature birth might affect vision. The study also looked at how sight is affected by retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a disorder of the blood vessels of the retina that’s common in premature babies, and by cryotherapy, a standard treatment for ROP.
