Prognosis
All of the current treatment methods unfortunately sacrifice some degree of peripheral vision in order to preserve central vision. Central
vision is the most critical vision used in daily tasks
such as reading, discerning colors, and focusing
straight ahead (Vanderbilt Children's Hospital,
2009). In some cases, despite timely treatment,
advanced ROP develops causing retinal detachment and severe vision loss or blindness. It is not
fully understood why this occurs. Shastry suggests that there may be a genetic factor involved
in the development of stage 4 and 5 ROP despite
treatment. ROP is similar to familial exudative vitreoretinopathy (FEVR) which also presents as the
cessation of normal blood vessel growth followed
by abnormal growth. FEVR is a genetic disorder
which is definitively linked to specific genetic mutations. Three of the four mutated genes causing
FEVR are also found to be mutated in advanced
ROP. Therefore, it is theorized that advanced
ROP may, in fact, be FEVR with early preterm
birth presenting as one environmental factor of
FEVR speeding up the advancement of this disease. This possibility opens the door to future
genetic therapies (Shastry, 2010).
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