Handheld OCT in children with Down’s syndrome
Reviewed by Ivan Yip

This article investigated the use of handheld optical coherence tomography (OCT) in children with Down’s syndrome. Fourteen children were recruited to the study with a mean age of 6 years and 10 months with 57% male. All patients were dilated. The important findings in this article were that 12 of the 14 children were successfully imaged with authors arguing that this shows handheld OCT is suitable to use in children with Down’s syndrome. They found from these images they all had foveal hypoplasia grade 1. Limitations included lack of control group using a normative data sample instead and a small cohort. The small cohort prevented them from making any inferences regarding visual acuity / contrast sensitivity against the finding of hypoplasia. They provide a detailed discussion regarding the reason why hypoplasia may be found in Down’s syndrome.

Segmentation of the foveal and parafoveal retinal architecture using handheld spectral-domain optical coherence tomography in children with Down’s syndrome.
Nicolson R, Osborne D, Fairhead L, et al.
EYE
2022;36(5):963-8.