Project title
Can provision of near vision glasses, as an early intervention, improve visual and developmental outcomes in children with perinatal brain insult? A feasibility study.
Project description
Significant long-term disabilities such as cognitive, neurologic, motor, neurodevelopmental and visual impairment can occur as a result of perinatal brain injury. Abnormalities of vision, as a result of cerebral visual impairment (CVI), can go unidentified even by targeted neurodevelopmental screeningduring follow-up programmes. This is a feasibility trial assessing the effectiveness of near vision glasses in 2 and 4 month old babies whom we know to be at risk of CVI.
- Research objectives
To establish:
1. The willingness of parents/carers to accept glasses at these ages.
2. The feasibility of fitting and dispensing glasses to infants aged 8 weeks versus 16 weeks.
3. Compliance with spectacle wear when dispensed at these ages.
4. Whether there are any safety issues with prescribing glasses to this group of children through mechanical trauma or impaired emmetropisation.
5. A PPI committee and conduct further PPI studies to determine at what age glasses are acceptable to parents of at-risk babies.
6. Feasible recruitment rates for the trial
7. Baseline and natural history data on visual, refractive, accommodative, and developmental characteristics of this patient group.
8. Retention rates in the trial for families in all three arms
9. Sensitivity of outcome measures to early improvement in visual function/development through early near vision glasses prescription in babies with and without hypoaccommodation (visual behaviour and fBNIRS).
10. Evidence for any early (baseline) markers for benefit from the intervention (visual behaviour, refractive or fBNIRS).
11. Feasibility of performing a health economic analysis of this management strategy
12. Possibility of developing an early optical biomarker of CVI using fBNIRS
Start date
11/2020
Primary supervisor
Mr Richard Bowman – Great Ormond Street Hospital
Based at
IFWH