ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To study functional and anatomic characteristics of eyes of Russian children with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).â© METHODS: One hundred children aged 10-16 years from Russian orphanages (St. Petersburg) were examined: 50 with verified diagnosis of FAS and 50 healthy children. All children were tested for distance visual acuity (VA) with subjective optimal correction (Sivtsev chart), skiascopy, visual inspection for FAS external ocular features, biomicroscopy, eye alignment using cover test, and indirect ophthalmoscopy.â© RESULTS: All analyzed parameters were worse in children with FAS compared with controls. Children with FAS showed a higher incidence of amblyopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and anisometropia. In children with FAS, the incidence of blepharophimosis was 34% (8% in controls), epicanthus 14% (2% in controls), telecanthus 32% (compared to 4% in controls), eyelid ptosis 9% (none in controls), and strabismus 26% (10% in controls). Ophthalmoscopy revealed a tilted optic disc in 5 children with FAS (7%) compared with none in controls.â© CONCLUSION: Russian children with FAS have a higher incidence of vision problems and eye pathology that needs to be taken into account and requires ophthalmologist monitoring.
Subject(s)
Eye Diseases/epidemiology , Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders/epidemiology , Adolescent , Amblyopia/diagnosis , Amblyopia/epidemiology , Blepharophimosis/diagnosis , Blepharophimosis/epidemiology , Blepharoptosis/diagnosis , Blepharoptosis/epidemiology , Child , Eye Diseases/diagnosis , Female , Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders/diagnosis , Humans , Incidence , Male , Ophthalmoscopy , Refractive Errors/diagnosis , Refractive Errors/epidemiology , Retinoscopy , Russia/epidemiology , Strabismus/diagnosis , Strabismus/epidemiology , Visual AcuityABSTRACT
AIM: To evaluate the visual magnocellular pathway by a coherent motion perception test in children with foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). METHODS: Eighty-nine children (49 with verified FAS and 40 without FAS) aged from 10 to 16 years were included into the study. Both the study and the control group were children living in orphanages. A coherent motion perception test was used. The test consisted of 150 white moving dots on a black background presented in different signal-to-noise ratio conditions. The task was direction detection of the coherently moving dots whose percentage decreased at each step. RESULTS: A significant difference between the two groups was found (p = 0.018). Children with FAS had lower coherent motion perception ability in all the signal-to-noise ratio conditions. A significant difference between difficulty levels (p < 0.001) was found for all subjects in both groups - decreasing the stimulus signal-to-noise level decreased the motion perception score. In both groups, the motion perception score differed for vertical and horizontal stimuli (p = 0.003) with better performance with vertical stimuli. CONCLUSION: Impaired motion perception in FAS children could be indicative of a dorsal stream developmental dysfunction resulting from alcohol brain damage.
