ABSTRACT

Many patients, especially neurologically impaired children attending occupational therapy continue to experience profound developmental delay even after so much efforts and medical assistance by the therapist. Low vision pose a great limitation against the positive impacts of occupational therapy on neurologically impaired children. This study assess the occurrence of low vision among neurologically impaired children attending occupational therapy in university of Benin teaching hospital so as to help in management of low vision patients in these categories.

A total of 51 patients with in the age group of 2 to 10 years were conveniently selected and subsequent eye examination was carried out to assess for low vision. These includes; Ocular health examination (external and internal eye examination), oculomotor tests and Refraction (Mohindra Retinoscopy). For the visual function examination, three test was carried out, these include; (a) Visual Acuity Test using the Cardiff Acuity Card Test (b) Contrast Sensitivity Test using the Hiding Heidi Low Contrast Face Test. (c) The Visual Field using the Confrontational Visual Field Method. The result obtained was recorded manually and analyzed using The Chi-square test  as processed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 22.0). Result shows that 40 subjects (78.4%)  out of the 51 examined presented with a best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) with moderate low vision to light perception while 11 subjects (21.6%) had normal visual acuity (>6/18 to better). Majority of female subject were more affected with low vision than males and age interval has slight effect on low vision. The cause of neurological impairment did not relatively affects the occurrence of low vision. This study will help to enlighten Optometrist on their role in occupational therapy especially assessing and training neurologically impaired children with low vision.

Keywords: Low vision, Neurological impairment in children, Occupational therapy.