Early intervention for children with cerebral visual impairment: preliminary results.
The 1999 paper only describes early CVI signs; newer work shows how to treat and measure life impact.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched 76 babies and toddlers who had cerebral visual impairment.
All kids were under four years old.
The paper only lists what the children looked at or ignored; no therapy was given.
What they found
The study gives a picture of common visual reactions in very young CVI.
It does not say if any child got better or worse.
How this fits with other research
Pascoali Rodovanski et al. (2021) moved past watching. They taught parents a short home program that helped preterm infants track objects better.
Greenlee et al. (2024) looked at the same diagnosis 25 years later. They found most school-age CVI children score low on quality-of-life tests, something the 1999 paper never measured.
Bathelt et al. (2019) also link severe early visual loss to later daily-skill gaps, filling the outcome gap left open by Webb et al. (1999).
Why it matters
This paper gives you a quick checklist of what CVI can look like in babies.
Use it as a baseline, then turn to later studies for proven ways to help.
If you need evidence-based targets, borrow the caregiver-coaching package from Pascoali Rodovanski et al. (2021) or add HRQOL probes from Greenlee et al. (2024).
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
According to the ophthalmological literature, cerebral visual impairment (CVI) is defined as a temporary or permanent visual loss caused by a disturbance of the posterior visual pathways and/or occipital lobes. The study of CVI is still a new field, and diagnosis is frequently difficult and sometimes may not even be considered. Different studies have taken into account various aetiologies of CVI. Neurological problems are common findings in children with CVI and this population may also show ocular abnormalities. The present study reviews the clinical history of 76 patients who have been examined at the Robert Hollman Foundation, Cannero, Italy, over the past 3 years. Infants and children were studied from birth to 4 years of age from both a neurological and an ophthalmological point of view. Taking the development of the children into account, responses to visual stimulation were analysed in order to compare the behaviours exhibited by the sample with those described in literature.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1999 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2788.1999.43120106.x