Interested families were educated about the programme and signed an informed consent prior to ophthalmic evaluation. The Ministry of Health funded the eye examinations with occasional funding received from the patient and their insurers. These exams were optional for the families. Under the umbrella of the Chinese Ministry of Health requirements for general neonatal assessment, the authors devised specifications for neonatal eye examination. The present study is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first to publish results of a large neonatal eye examination programme. This standard has the goal of discovering serious congenital, hereditary and acquired diseases in the neonatal period of healthy newborns. The Ministry of Health as part of its National Children's Health Standard encourages newborn examination in detail. Neonatal eye examination may play a significant role in this process. In the People's Republic of China, there is a move towards a national health standard for children. Smaller series have been published 2 3 previously and one study looked at fundus findings only in critically ill children. There are few previous studies looking at the incidence of retinal haemorrhages in healthy full-term newborns. Further, this age group has not been studied extensively and the actual prevalence of ocular abnormalities, transient and permanent, is largely unknown. A careful review of Pubmed revealed no published literature on the universality, much less the sensitivity and false-negative rate of RRT of normal newborns. Nonetheless, there remain a significant number of children who despite screening go undetected with respect to vision and eye disorders. With this schedule, it is assumed that the vast majority of ocular health issues will be discovered. Formal testing of recognition visual acuity will typically commence around 3 years of age. 1 Thereafter, children should have their eyes examined by their primary care physician on all well visits. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends red reflex testing (RRT) shortly after birth.
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