Thirty-five percent of the infants were later found to have abnormal oculomotor control, including impaired saccades and binocular eye alignment, at two years of age. Compared with preterm infants without impaired visual performance, the study infants with visual impairments had significantly smaller inferior occipital region brain tissue volumes.
Divyen K. Shah, MB, ChB, of Royal Children's Hospital, Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, who led the study says,
'This study is amongst the first published to link alterations in specific brain regional volumes of the visual pathway with impaired functioning in childhood for prematurely born infants. These findings help us to identify where and what is different in prematurely born infants. Such measurements could be done on an MRI scan at discharge from the neonatal unit identifying children with higher risk for later visual challenges.'
Source: Eurekalert
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