NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Droopy eye affects about 1 in 12,500 kids, which is about what doctors expected, a new study says.
Droopy eye, or ptosis, is usually caused by damage to the muscle that raises the eyelid and can be present at birth or result from later injuries or disease. It often forces kids to raise their eyebrows or lift up their chins to see.
Parents of kids with a droopy eyelid often ask their physician how common it is, Dr. Richard Lisman, an eye surgeon at the New York University Medical Center, told Reuters Health.
"We now have a very good study that we can quote to parents," said Lisman, who was not involved in the new work. He added that if parents suspect their child has the condition, they should see an eye doctor to find out if anything needs to be done.
Droopy eyelids are generally treated with surgery -- though only if they interfere with vision, according to Lisman.
Dr. Brian Mohney, who led the new research, said droopy eye usually affects only one eye.
"But in some kids, it's so severe that they can't see, even with their chin up," Mohney, a pediatric eye doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told Reuters Health.
The danger is that kids can develop "lazy eye" in the droopy eye, which weakens their vision and can become permanent if left untreated.
Mohney's team looked at the medical records of kids younger than 19 who were diagnosed with droopy eye between 1965 and 2004 in Olmsted County, Minnesota.
Over 40 years, 107 kids were diagnosed with the eye disorder, according to the new findings, published in the journal Ophthalmology.
In most of the cases -- 81 out of 107 -- the condition was present at birth.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/kb34sk Ophthalmology, online April 15, 2011.