Retrolental fibroplasia and its association with neural and somatic disease

Longitudinal study of gross‐motor development in blind infants and preschoolers1

“…Some studies (Crome, 1958;Potter, 1954;Williams, 1958) have indicated a higher incidence of neurological impairment or intellectual dysfunction in infants with ROP compared to preterm infants (for a review, see Scharf & Adams, 1984). For example, blind infants with ROP seem to have a higher incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage (Brown, Biglan 8c Stretavsky, 1990;Prozianoy, Garcia-Prats, Hittner, Adams & Rudolph, 1981).…”

“…In a study of 12 blind 1-to 12-year-olds with ROP, Teplin (1988) has found only 4 children with no additional severe impairments. Some authors (e.g., Crome, 1958) have suspected that ROP does not just involve an ophthalmological injury, but is regularly accompanied by a frequently undetected mild cerebral injury.…”

Editorial: Retrolental fibroplasia (RLF) unrelated to oxygen therapy.

“…Indeed, during the passage of two decades since oxygen was proved both clinically and experimentally to be responsible for the vast majority ofcases, it has become increasingly evident that an aberrant overgrowth of retinal vessels, following the same three pathological stages as in RLF, may occur in infancy in conditions apparently unconnected with oxygen exposure (Huggert,I954;Briuckner,I968;Seedorif,I968), or in fact with prematurity (Reese, I949;Reese and Blodi, 195I;Reese and Stepanik, 1954;Unsworth, I949;Dixon and Paul, 195I;Minton and Cole, 1951;Karlsberg, Green, and Patz, I973), or with both (Schlitter, I957;Crome, 1958;Vergez, Dhermy, and Cosson, I966). In histological sections from the eyes of infants in which neovascularization is apparent, it is not difficult to consider such cases to fall within the RLF group, but it is not possible to determine what proportion of cases showing only vitreous bands or retinal detachment, with or without fibrous tissue behind the lens, might have begun in this way.…”