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| One in every 677 live births in the United States has a treatable eye disease or anomaly that will cause blindness unless detected early.. Cataracts, *Coat�s Disease, Glaucoma, tumors including Retinoblastoma. Some of these diseases can take sight as early as two months of age. Retinoblastoma will take life if not detected and allowed to escape out of the eye. *Coat�s Disease is only found in male children. Two of the children whose lives were impacted by Joey�s story have had Coat�s Disease. (More information on the other site link.) NOTE: Pre mature babies have automatic eye dilation exams. Sadly, 90 percent of the infants born with eye diseases are the healthy babies and we are not looking in their eyes! ASK FOR THIS EXAM! Early detection and referral are key to saving vision and life. |
| IMPORTANT NOTE FOR INFANTS: |
| An infant needs an eye dilation exam. The pupil of an infant is small in diameter and needs to be dilated in order for the ophthalmoscope to see tumors and other ocular diseases such as cataracts effectively. This is easily done at the well-baby visit. After the infant is weighed, the nurse drops the eye dilation drop in the corner of each eye. The pediatrician will check the eyes with the ophthalmoscope in a darkened room at the end of the exam in order to give the pupils time to dilate. Therefore, this causes no extra time to the doctor. The pediatricians who are performing routine eye dilation exams want to see all doctors doing the same. It takes only ten seconds of a nurse's time to put in the drops of which cost only pennies. I refer to it as �the ten second, two cent exam.� A pediatrician performing the exam for over a decade described it as �gentle, safe and cost effective.� Another pediatrician doing routine eye dilation exams for over 20 years wrote, �I only wish we had other simple, inexpensive and safe methods of screening for other diseases that have a potential devastating impact as loss of sight or loss of life.� |
| THE INFANT EYE CARE BILL, nicknamed �Joey�s Bill� was written in the state of Florida after Joey died. This bill is asking for eye dilation exams at birth, the 6 to 8 week well-baby exam and one more at the 6-9 month well baby exam. Eye dilation exams in the beginning of life are vital to the health and welfare of our children. What we did for hearing, we now need to do for sight�vision screening needs to start at birth. Every child has the right to healthy vision and life. This legislation will help ensure that right. No child will needlessly go blind, loose an eye or die to any treatable eye. This is one we can fix. Working together we will make it happen. Joey is smiling. |
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