Preterm Baby Essay

923 Words4 Pages

Vision and processing of visual information by brain are learned skills. From birth, babies begin exploring the wonders in the world with their eyes. A newborn infant, or neonate, is a child under 28 days of age. During these first 28 days of life, the child is at highest risk of dying. It is thus crucial that appropriate feeding and care are provided during this period, both to improve the child’s chances of survival and to lay the foundations for a healthy life.13 Ocular development: The preterm infant has a shortened intrauterine period and is therefore removed from an environment uniquely designed for protection, growth, and the appropriate stimulation of the fetus. In addition the exteriorized fetus, now the preterm neonate, is exposed …show more content…

These effects may lead to a lifetime of visual impairment. Crofts and associates16 have quantified the risk of visual impairment as being 26 times greater for VLBW infants than for those with birth weights of 2,500 to 3,000 g. Structures in the visual system mature according to a genetically preprogrammed timeline beginning at conception. Preterm birth presents the incompletely developed visual system with a variety of situations not encountered in full-term visual development. Preterm infants are subjected to two basic alterations from normal that can affect the processes of normal visual development.17, 18 First, the visual system is exteriorized prematurely, and second, it is subjected to diseases and complications that are known to affect prematurely born infants. The preterm birth exposes the developing visual system to numerous environmental exposures from which it would otherwise be protected in utero. These differences include higher-than-normal oxygen tension, light exposure,

Open Document