Unveiling Visual Acuity in 58,712 Four-Year-Olds: Standardized Assessment Defined Normative Visual Acuity Threshold

• Published in: Vision (Basel) 2024-06, Vol.8 (2), p.39
• Main Authors: Bjeloš, Mirjana, Bušić, Mladen, Rak, Benedict, Ćurić, Ana, Kuzmanović Elabjer, Biljana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acuity; amblyopia; Astigmatism; Binocular vision; child; Children; Children & youth; Eye examinations; Medical personnel; Medical screening; Myopia; registries; screening; Strabismus; Visual acuity; Visual impairment; Visual thresholds
• ISSN: 2411-5150; 2411-5150
• DOI: 10.3390/vision8020039

The purpose was to define the threshold of normal visual acuity (VA), mean monocular and binocular VA, and interocular difference in the uniform cohort of healthy four-year-old children. All the children were recruited from the Croatian National Registry of Early Amblyopia Detection database. LEA Symbols inline optotypes were used for VA testing at near and distance, binocularly and monocularly. The pass cut-off level was set to ≤0.1 logMAR. The final sample consisted of 58,712 four-year-old children. In total, 83.78% of the children had unremarkable results, and 16.22% of the children were referred to examination. Of those, 92% of the children were referred due to binocular, and 8% of the children due to monocular causes. The children referred due to binocular causes demonstrated a VA of 0.3 ± 0.24, while the children referred due to monocular causes 0.6 ± 0.21. The ROC curve analysis defined the uniform cut-off value for a normative VA of 0.78. We analyzed the largest uniform cohort of 58,712 children, and have determined normative data for binocular and monocular VA tested with gold standard logMAR chart in four-year-old children. The results presented here established no reasoning to further utilize historical protocols in testing VA in preschool children aged ≥ 4 years.