RT Book, Section A1 Isenberg, Sherwin J. A1 Apt, Leonard A2 Rudolph, Colin D. A2 Rudolph, Abraham M. A2 Lister, George E. A2 First, Lewis R. A2 Gershon, Anne A. SR Print(0) ID 7059721 T1 Chapter 582. International Pediatric Ophthalmology T2 Rudolph's Pediatrics, 22e YR 2011 FD 2011 PB The McGraw-Hill Companies PP New York, NY SN 978-0-07-149723-7 LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=7059721 RD 2024/03/29 AB Approximately 500,000 children become blind worldwide each year. This figure represents one new case of pediatric blindness every minute. It has been estimated that today there are 1,400,000 blind children in the world,1 and many of these children will not survive beyond 2 years of age. While 1,000,000 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).2 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.