Associated Conditions of Cerebral Palsy: Vision Impairment
Vision Impairments
A number of vision impairments are more common in people with cerebral palsy than in the general population. Strabismus, a condition characterized by differences in the left and right eye muscles often causing the eyes to be misaligned or cross-eyed. The misalignment causes double vision. In children, however, the brain often adapts by ignoring signals from one eye. Recent studies have shown that 65-70 percent of children with cerebral palsy also have strabismus. Untreated, this can lead to very poor vision in one eye and can interfere with certain visual skills, such as judging distance. Because of this, physicians may recommend surgery to correct strabismus.

Nystagmus is defined as the rapid oscillating movement of the eye. This interferes with processing visual stimuli because the eye is not able to focus or fixate on its surrounding.

Cortical Blindness
In cortical blindness, the eye itself is functioning properly, but the signals sent along the optic nerve are not being processed in the cortex so the child can not see.

Hemianopia is a condition marked by impaired vision or blindness in half of the visual field in one eye. If the impairment in the right or left half of the visual field is present in both eyes, the condition is called homonymous hemianopia. Put simply, this means that the child cannot see anything in the entire left or right visual field in both eyes. Because both eyes are affected more or less equally, the location of the problem must be at the optic chiasm (the part of the brain where the optic nerves partially cross) or further back along the visual pathways.

In an action such as reading, individuals with normal vision make a rapid series of fixed focuses that are processed in the brain similarly to a motion picture. For children with Cerebral Palsy, sometimes the muscles of their eyes are not able to smoothly coordinate those movements which results in what is called n abnormality of saccadic and pursuit movements in their eyes.

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Associated Conditions of Cerebral Palsy: Hearing, Depression, Breathing Problems,
Drooling, ADHD, ADD, Bowel issues, Swallowing, Epilepsy, Speech Problems.