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 is a condition characterized by differences in the left and right eye muscles.  It often causes the eyes to be misaligned or cross-eyed, resulting in double vision.  In children, the brain often adapts by ignoring signals from one eye.  Recent studies have shown that 65 percent to 70 percent of children with cerebral palsy have strabismus.  Untreated, it can lead to very poor vision in one eye and can interfere with certain visual skills, such as being able to tell how far two objects are from each other.  Physicians may recommend surgery to correct strabismus.

“Nystagmus” is defined as rapid back-and-forth movement of the eye.  It interferes with the processing of visual signals because the eye is not able to focus or fixate (stay in one place).

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 (the part of the brain where sight is centered).  The child cannot see.

Hemianopia is a condition marked by impaired vision or blindness in half of the visual field in one eye.  If the impairment of the right or left half of the visual field is present in both eyes, the condition is called homonymous hemianopia.  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, which results in an abnormality of saccadic and pursuit movements in their eyes.  In pursuit movement, the eye adjusts the speed of its movement with the speed of the object being seen.  In saccadic movement, the eye aligns itself with the object being seen.

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