Medical technology is nowadays quite advanced and thanks to that people are able to identify the causes for various disabilities and that way help a lot of people. When these causes are discovered, people will be able to cure the disabilities or at least be able to prevent them from occurring. A good example of the benefits of medical technology is the decreased occurrence of two causes of visual disabilities. These two causes are retinopathy of prematurity or ROP and rubella. Thanks to the medical technology, doctors are able to prevent ROP from occurring in low birth weight babies in a lot of cases. In cases when ROP was not prevented, parents need not worry too much since there is an eye surgery that will correct the vision problem. On the other hand, people are safe from rubella thanks to the vaccine that every person receives.
Causes
According to the researches, almost 50% of all children that are blind have that disability due to certain prenatal factors. Most of them are hereditary. At this moment, researchers have still not discovered the genes that cause certain forms of blindness but are working hard on finding them. For instance, the gene that causes retinitis pigmentosa has been discovered and isolated. Thanks to that, there is hope of finding the cure in the near future. Laser treatment, surgery and corneal implants are also the reasons why there are not that many children with visual disabilities. All these factors reduce the incidence of visual disabilities in children. If they do not, they will at least make them less severe. Even though medical technology reduces the prevalence of visual disabilities in children it is not that uncommon for the technology to be the cause of the disability as well. Thanks to the technology a lot of infants survive premature birth and low birth weights but due to that fact a child is often born with certain disabilities.
Prevention
People need to know that a lot of visual disabilities can nowadays be prevented, but people should also know that there are a lot more that can be done. The risk of visual disabilities can be hugely reduced if people were better protected against eye injuries, for instance. Prevention is important and parents need to protect the children against eye injuries. According to the data, there are thousands of cases every year of eye injuries in children under the age of five. Some simple steps like placing sharp objects out of children’s reach will hugely reduce the chance of an eye injury. Making sure that all the toys are safe is important as well. Early treatment is essential if the child suffers an injury.
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