Why is it important to take the child for an eye examination before starting school?

There are eye defects that are hard to see in a child. In the period of a small and preschool child, there are not many demands on the accuracy of vision, because the child plays most of the time. However, visual requirements at school are at a high level and the child must have good visual acuity in order to follow the lessons and not fall behind.

The most common refractive defect in children is farsightedness – hypermetropia, and it is often hidden – latent. The eye is small and in order to focus the light rays on the macula – the point of clear vision – it has to strain a lot with the help of the ciliary muscle and the elastic lens. At the end of the day, the child may feel tired, eye pain, pain in and around the eyes, blurred vision… High hypermetropia at an earlier age can lead to accommodative strabismus due to strong accommodation. Timely correct correction after cycloplegia – relaxation of the ciliary muscle, which we achieve by using drops during the examination, will be a therapy for all the mentioned complaints.

In the period of earliest childhood, it is difficult to detect if the child has a refractive anomaly of only one eye. Based on the good vision of one eye, the child will behave normally, but gradually neglecting the other eye that has a defect (farsightedness, nearsightedness or astigmatism) will result in permanent low vision – amblyopia.
If the defect is detected in time and a correction is prescribed in the form of glasses or, even better, contact lenses for the weaker eye, vision will develop smoothly. Without correction, in addition to low vision, there is also the possibility of deviation of the weaker eye – farsightedness. In addition, unequal visual acuity in the two eyes compromises the development of binocular vision – stereo vision. It can be a handicap in the later years of life because it endangers the performance of numerous activities (surgeon, dentist, tailor, metal turner, glass cutter…).

Astigmatism is a refractive anomaly that is difficult to detect based on the child’s behavior, but must be detected by an ophthalmological examination – that is, an active approach. Astigmatism is a disorder of the curvature of the cornea of the front surface of the eye in one meridian, parents who have this defect and wear cylindrical glasses that correct this defect should know that this defect is hereditary and that they can expect it in their child. The child sees, but reads the numbers/letters/signs incorrectly during the examination, instead of 1 they read 7, instead of 5 they read 6, instead of 9 they read 0 and so on. They read incorrectly because they only see part of the signs clearly.

In addition to astigmatism, short-sightedness – myopia is a defect that is inherited, and if one or both parents are short-sighted, there is a high probability that the child will be as well. Nowadays, there is more and more total myopia as well as malignant high myopia, due to more and more time spent in close-up activities (use of phones, tablets, laptops).

In addition to heredity, one should suspect that a child is short-sighted if:

it often falls, it is clumsy
he does not recognize people who approach him
it gets very close to objects such as a television
squint, trying to focus the scattered rays

An examination by an ophthalmologist reveals any refractive anomaly easily, but with mandatory cycloplegia – dilation of the pupils, in order to relax the ciliary muscle with drops, which with its strong action in children can mask the real condition.

Properly prescribed correction, along with regular wearing of glasses / contact lenses, enables maximum reception of visual impressions and proper development of vision in children in both eyes. In this way, we will enable the overall development of the child.