Refractive error, Strabismus, cataract, eye pressure, tear duct obstruction, eyelid deformities and eye tumors are the most common eye diseases in children. Therefore, eye examination in children should be performed from the newborn period and the examinations should be repeated at 6 months, 18 months, 3 years, 5 years and preschool. This frequency can be further increased if there is a known eye disease in the family.
Symptoms of eye disease in children may include cross-eye , low eyelid, watery eyes, burring, staring at the television and the book closely, squinting, headache, dizziness, staring laterally slopped and inability to focus.
Strabismus is the most common disease in children. Strabismus is the disruption of parallelism in the eyes. It may occur as a result of refractive error in the eyes or as a result of problems in the brain center. If one eye is looking straight and the other is looking in other directions, it means that the child has strabismus. The most common strabismus in children is inward shifts due to visual defects. So the child should start wearing glasses when starting the occlusion treatment. Because after a while the sliding eye will get lazy to prevent double vision. Surgery should be planned as soon as possible in strabismus that will get better with surgical intervention.
Ocular laziness is the condition that we encounter as the vision of one eye is better than the other one, when there is a difference of more than 2 diopters between two eyes, low eyelid and congenital cataract. It can only be treated if it can be detected at an early age so the eye examination very important and shouldn’t be neglacted at small ages. Because the brain supresses the blurred eye and laziness occurs. The treatment of lazy eye is occlusion treatment. Sealing tapes are used in this application and the good-seeing eye is closed, so that the less-seeing eye can learn to see alone.
In children with eye pressure, the child is disturbed by light. Over time, the eyes grow larger and larger. Without early diagnosis and treatment, the transparent layer becomes white and prevents the baby from seeing.
Another most common disease is tear duct obstruction. In babies, watery eyes and burring are seen in both eyes. Eye canal opens up to 1 year with massage method. Infection is prevented with antibiotic drops. If there is still a complaint at the age of 1, the eye canals are opened with a special probe under general anesthesia and balloon method is used if success cannot be achieved.
If the pupil of the eye is white when it should be black, this is a symptom of congenital cataract and the patient should consult with a doctor immediately. Marriages with relatives, mother’s infections during pregnancy may have caused this. Cataract surgery should be performed as soon as possible so that lazy eye can be prevented. Rarely, an eye tumor may cause this appearance in which the treatment is early diagnosis and surgery.
In spring, vernal conjunctivitis can also be seen in allergic children. Itchy, burning and redness are seen every spring until children finish puberty and continue until autumn. Treatment is carried out with protection against allergens and eye drops.
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