Abstract
Purpose
The research aimed to investigate the average age of recovery in infants with delayed visual maturation (DVM).
DVM is diagnosed retrospectively and there are currently no management guidelines. This study gives an evidence-based recovery time which can help clinicians to appropriately reassure anxious parents about DVM prognosis. This research is significant as this is the largest participant study about DVM to date.
Method
This is a retrospective service evaluation of 50 infants with DVM presenting to St James University Hospital between 2012 and 2017. The DVM was classified into either type I or type II. Several key variables were recorded including: patient gender, age at recovery, type of DVM and whether Electrodiagnostic testing was used.
Results
STATA analysis showed that the average age of recovery for type I and type II DVM was 6.708 and 13.464 months, respectively. A multivariable linear regression adjusted for gender as a confounder. The average age of recovery was 6.179 months longer for infants with type II DVM which is a statistically significant difference (95% CI: 3.214–9.143, P value: < 0.001).
Conclusion
This research supports the hypothesis that the age of recovery in type I DVM is significantly shorter than type II when adjusted for gender. The main limitation is that recovery age is recorded from when the infants attended clinic, however; their vision could have recovered prior to this. In the future, additional multi-centre research needs to be conducted looking at larger patient samples to allow for further sub-categorisation of DVM types.
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Data availability
The anonymous data are stored on the hospital database and is accessible if required.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to say thanks to everyone working at the SJUH ophthalmology department. With reference to Ian Simmons and Janice Hoole, as this project would not have been possible without them.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, analysis and manuscript write up were performed by AL and MH. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
This research study was conducted retrospectively from data obtained for clinical purposes. We consulted extensively with the University of Leeds ethics board who determined that our study did not need ethical approval. To ensure appropriate data governance, all patients were given a number to anonymise their data and the data were input into a secure EXCEL spreadsheet.
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Dr Aimee Lloyd and Dr Megan Hadfield are joint first authors of the research.
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Lloyd, A., Hadfield, M. Average recovery time from delayed visual maturation. Int Ophthalmol 41, 2241–2247 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-021-01785-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-021-01785-2