Are There Any Indications Of Vision Loss In Children?

Aug. 24, 2009— -- Question: Are there any indications of vision loss in children?

Answer: There are actually several potential indications of vision loss in children. When the child's older and can be verbal -- say, you know, a child over three or four -- that might be a little bit easier. They might complain to the parents if not seeing well for doing some of their tasks. When they're real young, that might be more difficult for both parents and teachers or other physicians in the eye field to pick up, but there are some potential clues.

If a child seems to have an eye that's drifting in or out and is not always straight, then that is a potential indication that there will be vision trouble, even vision loss. A very important one to pick up is a child who doesn't have what we call a good red reflex -- almost a white pupil, that's something that could be extremely concerning and that can be picked up even in infancy and we'd want to know about that. Those are just a couple of the indications that there might be a vision problem in a young child.