Vision Impairment
A large number of children with cerebral palsy have strabismus, a condition in which the eyes are not aligned because of differences in the left and right eye muscles. In an adult, this condition causes double vision. In children, however, the brain often adapts to the condition by ignoring signals from one of the eyes. Untreated, this can lead to very poor vision in one eye and can interfere with certain visual skills, such as judging distance. In some cases, doctors may recommend surgery to correct strabismus.
Some children can have hemianopia, which is defective vision or blindness that impairs the normal field of vision. For example, when hemianopia affects only the right field of the right eye, a child looking straight ahead might have perfect vision except on the far right.
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 further back along the visual pathways well behind the eyes.
