Visual acuity in the newborn with notes on some objective methods to determine visual acuity
✍ Scribed by Arthur Linksz
- Publisher
- Springer-Verlag
- Year
- 1973
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 619 KB
- Volume
- 34
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0012-4486
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The visual acuity of the newborn -if it can be determined at all -must be determined by an objective method, i.e., by observing some overt reaction to an appropriate, variable and measurable stimulus. The problems of testing visual acuity by such a technique are manifold, even if one is dealing with grown-ups.
Testing it in the newborn or infant offers some added difficulties.
The man who first broached the problem of an objective determination of visual acuity was JOHANNES OHM, a German ophthalmologist (1921).* OHM spent all his active years in the Ruhr, the German coal miners" country, and appropriately, devoted a lifetime to the study of nystagmus. He approached the problem of objectively measuring visual acuity in a round-about way, via the optokinetic nystagmus.
As is well known, once conditions are properly set optokinetic nystagmus cannot be suppressed at will. But it will stop as soon as some small but stationary object** is interposed in front of the optokinetic pattern -provided it is the From the