Researches to Save Premature Babies from Blindness
As premature babies fight for life, another battle is raging behind their tiny eyelids - an eye disease that ultimately blinds up to 2,000 of these infants a year in the United States. Now scientists are exploring two promising new ways to save preemies' eyesight: strictly maintaining the babies' oxygen levels at a constant but slightly lower level than usual - which apparently slashed blindness at one major hospital - and giving the smallest babies an eye-important growth hormone they lack.
Preventing the blinding disease - called retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP - is a major goal because once it hits there's no sure way to save vision. Today's best treatment, laser therapy, decreases the chance of blindness by only a quarter, and many babies who don't go blind still will never see well enough as adults to drive. The smaller the preemie, the bigger the risk of getting ROP. So with doctors saving more and more of the 40,000 babies born every year who weigh under 2.6 pounds, new ways to battle ROP are crucial.
"It's very devastating," says Dr. Lois Smith of Harvard Medical School, describing watching preemies survive only to lose their sight. Smith, who discovered the growth-hormone connection, calls today's ROP treatment "medieval ... but we just do what we can." Very premature babies don't have properly formed blood vessels in the retina, the eye's innermost layer. Sudden exposure to oxygen as doctors attempt to save these babies is believed to cut off further blood vessel formation.
Then there's a backlash: Blood-starved retinal tissue sends out an urgent call for help that results in sudden growth of abnormal blood vessels, eventually causing vision-blocking retina scars and even detachment. To cut off that abnormal growth, doctors use a laser to destroy part of the retina emitting the distress call. That destroys some working eye tissue in hopes of saving the rest, but it can't restore lost sight. Preventing ROP would be far better.
(Source: APBiscom)
