TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - International Pediatric Ophthalmology A1 - Khitri, Monica R. A1 - Isenberg, Sherwin J. A2 - Kline, Mark W. PY - 2018 T2 - Rudolph's Pediatrics, 23e AB - It has been estimated that 19 million children globally are visually impaired, of whom 1.4 million are irreversibly blind. Not only does childhood blindness invoke substantial financial burden to the family and country healthcare resources, it impacts neurobehavioral development and survival: up to 60% of these children do not survive within 1 year of becoming blind. While 1 million of these children are considered untreatable by current standards due to retinal dystrophy, microphthalmos, cortical blindness, and optic atrophy or hypoplasia, the remaining 400,000 cases are potentially treatable. The main avoidable causes are corneal scarring from infection or trauma (260,000), cataract (50,000), and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP; 40,000). Other treatable blinding conditions include amblyopia and uncorrected refractive error. Much of the data concerning causes of pediatric blindness in developing countries come from studies of children attending schools for the blind. This information may represent a bias, since data from children not attending these schools would not be included. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/04/19 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182925680 ER -