眼科|Research & Innovation

Our clinicians and researchers interact to advance pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus and to bring these advances to patients in need. The focus of our basic research is on the major causes of vision loss in children, including retinopathy,amblyopia and strabismusand retinal degeneration, as well as to the promise of vision rehabilitation, including visual object recognition.

Some of our recent research includes:

防止早产视网膜病变
正在进行有希望的调查，以防止早产的视网膜病变，在许多早产婴儿中发生的疾病会导致失明。目前，激光手术是对患有这种疾病的婴儿的唯一希望，并且手术并不总是成功解决。波士顿儿童的研究人员已经在动物模型中表明，生长因子的剂量可以防止ROP。

New methods for early detection of misaligned eyes
有时，当孩子的眼睛交叉时，问题很明显。在其他时候，当眼睛对齐仅略微关闭时，斜视可能会尚未发现，因为儿科医生很难发现小小的未对准角度。然而，如果未被发现，大脑不会学会如何从未对齐的眼睛中正确看见，孩子可以发展出亚正态视力，这种疾病被称为弱视（懒惰的眼睛）。据估计，多达500,000名患有这种情况的学龄前儿童尚未诊断且未经治疗。在这些难以检测的情况下，新的早期检测方法至关重要。

研究人员at Children's have developed remote sensing scanners that can screen children as young as 2 years old, and detect even slight misalignment of the eyes. Perfecting this technology will allow pediatricians across the country to perform a quick screening exam while the child, unaware of testing, gazes at a winking smiley face for a few seconds.

先天性纤维化和杜安综合症
先天性纤维化和杜安综合症是尤其是毁灭性的形式strabismusin which several or all the eye muscles malfunction, causing profound misalignment. Surgery to correct the condition often fails.

儿童研究人员已经确定了这些疾病中突变的几个基因。计划进行临床试验以提高对这些基因的理解。使用强大的MRI扫描仪研究人员也正在开发一个轨道成像中心，以将神经的途径绘制为肌肉。有关这些研究以及如何参与的更多信息，请参阅Engle Laboratory.

Amblyopia Treatment Study
The Department of Ophthalmology is a designated research site for the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigations Group (PEDIG), a collaborative network funded by the National Eye Institute that facilitates multicenter clinical research in eye disorders that affect children. The department is currently investigating the efficacy of patching therapy to treat children between the ages of 7-13 years who have amblyopia (lazy eye) which results in decreased visual acuity.

Patching therapy is a method of occlusion of the "good" eye with a goal of improving the acuity in the fellow eye. It is widely known that visual acuity can be improved by this method in young children with amblyopia, but opinions differ as to whether it is useful in children between the 7-13 age group, when children reach a certain point of ophthalmic maturity. The Amblyopia Treatment Study is looking at large volumes of children at numerous sites throughout the country to determine definitively whether patching can be used as a method of treatment for older children.小儿眼调查员的更多信息.

Babies with cataract
波士顿儿童医院's Ophthalmology Department is part of a multi-eye center study to determine how best to treat infants once the cataract is removed with the goal of attaining normal vision: contact lenses or surgical placement of a plastic lens called intra-ocular lens. The Infant Aphakia Treatment Study aims to determine which of these two methods is the best method to focus the eyes of babies following cataract surgery. The study will follow infants between the ages of 4 weeks and 7 months who were treated for cataracts for five years.

Research

波士顿儿童医院眼科系涉及许多研究项目，旨在改善各种视力问题的诊断和治疗方法。有关研究计划的更多信息，请访问我们的研究网站：www.infantvision.org.