Premature Birth Raises Risk Of Retinal Detachment

A study by Swedish scientists has found that children born before 32 weeks are up to 19 times more likely to develop retinal detachment in later life compared to babies born nearer to their due date.

Published in the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the study is the first long-term, population-based research into pre-term birth and retinal detachment risks. The scientists analysed more than three million births and found that the risk was greatest for babies born before 28 weeks, at 19 times the risk for babies carried to term. For children born between weeks 28 and 31, the risk of developing a condition that could lead to retinal detachment was four times greater than for those born at term.

Retinal detachment is often the result of retinopathy of prematurity, a condition associated with the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the retina.

The lead author of the study, Anna-Karin Edstedt Bonamy, commented that the risk of retinal detachment increases with age. She noted that there is a higher survival rate among pre-term babies since the 1970s, which allows medics to continue their research in order to establish if this increased risk continues as prematurely-born babies grow older.

Other studies have already suggested that people born prematurely are also at lifelong increased risks for other eye conditions. These risks include subnormal visual acuity, visual perceptual problems, strabismus (cross-eye), reduced contrast sensitivity and visual fields, and reflective errors (in particular high myopia).