MAR 22, 2010
Pediatric Ophth/Strabismus
This cross-sectional, population-based study included 1,030 white and 1,268 African American children aged 6 to 71 months from The Baltimore Pediatric Eye Disease Survey.
The authors found the overall presence of strabismus and amblyopia to be 3.3 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively, in white children, and 2.1 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively, in African American children. Only one child had bilateral amblyopia. Esotropia and exotropia each accounted for close to half of all strabismus in both groups and were about three times more frequent in children after 12 months of age compared with the first year of life. Rates of strabismus were highest in children aged 60 through 71 months (5.8 percent for whites and 2.9 percent for African Americans), with only one case found in 84 white children aged 6 through 11 months. The nearly equal rates of esotropia and exotropia among whites (1.5 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively) parallels recent studies that suggest esotropia has become less common.
National population projections suggest there are approximately 677,000 cases of manifest strabismus among children 6 through 71 months of age and 271,000 cases of amblyopia among children 30 through 71 months of age in the United States.