Vision Screening in Children Aged 6 Months to 5 Years: Evidence Report and Systematic Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force

Abstract

Importance: Preschool vision screening could allow detection and treatment of vision abnormalities during a critical developmental stage, preserving function and quality of life.

Objective: To review the evidence on screening for and treatment of amblyopia, its risk factors, and refractive error in children aged 6 months to 5 years to inform the US Preventive Services Task Force.

Data sources: MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and trial registries through June 2016; references; and experts, with surveillance of the literature through June 7, 2017.

Study selection: English-language randomized clinical trials (RCTs) or prospective cohort studies that evaluated screening, studies evaluating test accuracy, RCTs of treatment vs inactive controls, and cohort studies or case-control studies assessing harms.

Data extraction and synthesis: Dual review of abstracts, full-text articles, and study quality; qualitative synthesis of findings. Studies were not quantitatively pooled because of clinical and methodological heterogeneity.

Main outcomes and measures: Visual acuity, amblyopia, school performance, functioning, quality of life, test accuracy, testability, and harms.

Results: Forty studies were included (N = 34 709); 34 evaluated test accuracy. No RCTs compared screening with no screening, and no studies evaluated school performance, function, or quality of life. Studies directly assessing earlier or more intensive screening were limited by high attrition. Positive likelihood ratios were between 5 and 10 for amblyopia risk factors or nonamblyogenic refractive error in most studies of test accuracy and were greater than 10 in most studies evaluating combinations of clinical tests. Inability to cooperate may limit use of some tests in children younger than 3 years. Studies with low prevalence (<10%) of vision abnormalities showed high false-positive rates (usually >75%). Among children with amblyopia risk factors (eg, strabismus or anisometropia), patching improved visual acuity of the amblyopic eye by a mean of less than 1 line on a standard chart after 5 to 12 weeks for children pretreated with glasses (2 RCTs, 240 participants); more children treated with patching than with no patching experienced improvement of at least 2 lines (45% vs 21%; P = .003; 1 RCT, 180 participants). Patching plus glasses improved visual acuity by about 1 line after 1 year (0.11 logMAR [95% CI, 0.05-0.17]) for children not pretreated with glasses (1 RCT, 177 participants). Glasses alone improved visual acuity by less than 1 line after 1 year (0.08 logMAR [95% CI, 0.02-0.15], 1 RCT, 177 participants).

Conclusions and relevance: Studies directly evaluating the effectiveness of screening were limited and do not establish whether vision screening in preschool children is better than no screening. Indirect evidence supports the utility of multiple screening tests for identifying preschool children at higher risk for vision problems and the effectiveness of some treatments for improving visual acuity outcomes.