If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  Cryotherapy For Abnormal Retinal Blood Vessels Does Not Cause Myopia In Premature Children SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- February 5, 2001 -- A study in the February 2001 issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Eye M.D. Association, reports that use of freezing treatment (cryotherapy) to halt the growth of abnormal retinal blood vessels in premature children (a sight-threatening condition called retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP) does not cause myopia, as previously thought. The procedure does prevent retinal detachment in eyes which often are found to have high myopia. The multi-center study, conducted by the Cryotherapy for Retinopathy of Prematurity Cooperative Group (CRYO-ROP) under a grant from the National Eye Institute, evaluated the effect of cryoptherapy on refractive error status in 291 premature children. Previous studies have shown that increased severity of ROP is associated with increased prevalence of myopia. Therefore, some researchers have suggested that use of cryoptherapy to treat ROP further increases myopia in these eyes. However, this new study shows that the association of increased myopia with treated eyes results from the fact that twice as many untreated eyes progressed to retinal detachment and therefore were unable to be assessed for refractive error. This finding is reinforced by the fact that in a subset of children who had one treated eye and one untreated eye that could be assessed, refractive errors were similar at most ages. In fact, according to Graham E. Quinn, MD, lead author of this report, "the slightly higher prevalence of high myopia in treated eyes may be due to cryoptherapy's preservation of retinal structure in eyes that would have progressed to retinal detachment in the absence of treatment."
|
