{Hospitalar} Twenty Second Diagnosis

Studies made by the Brazilian Council of Ophthalmology show that one in five children have sight problems.

When undiagnosed, as is often the case with poorer children in third world countries, these conditions can be the hidden cause of poor academic performance in schools.

That is the reason why Spot™ Vision Screener, an innovative automated scanner developed by Welch Allyn (a brand of the American firm Hill-Rom) and shown at Hospitalar 2018 is such good news. In only 20 seconds, it can identify problems such as strabismus, myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, anisometropia (when the difference in vision between the eyes is greater than normal and interferes with the stereoscopic vision), anisocoria (unequal diameter of the pupils) and the most serious of them all, amblyopia (childhood blindness).

The idea is to replace the Snellen Signal Scale method, in which doctors ask their patients to identify letters or symbols. Because it does not require any subjective input from the patient, the Spot™ Vision Screener can be used even with babies from the age of six months, as well as with children who cannot yet read or have special needs. Also, the Snellen chart method takes longer, often misses significant risk factors and has a high rate of misdiagnosis.

The Spot™ Vision Screener is equipped with a touch sensitive screen, is intuitive to use, requiring little training, is portable and lightweight. It also offers wi-fi, facilitating efficient import and export of patient records.