I have a friend who had a premature baby who suffered from this, so I thought I would share it. Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a disease that affects immature vasculature in the eyes of premature babies. It can be mild with no visual defects, or it may become aggressive with new blood vessel formation and progress to retinal detachment and blindness. As smaller and younger babies are surviving, the incidence of ROP has increased.

During the 1940s and 1950s, ROP, also known as retrolental fibroplasia, was the leading cause of blindness in children in the United States. In 1951, a Dr. Campbell first suggested that ROP was related to the introduction of oxygen therapy into the newborn nursery, and this was later confirmed. Today, after oxygen therapy has been studied and found not to be the single causative agent, the factors that play a role in the pathogenesis of ROP are still unknown.

Does anyone know what treatment for this entails?

Hi there

Sorry to hear about the diagnosis. I do know something about the treatments.

Cryotherapy was the original mode of treatment (since the 1970s). The procedure may be done using general or local anaesthesia. Basically it involves approximately 50 applications of a freezing probe under direct visualisation with cryo applications to the retina

Laser surgery has been shown to be as effective as cryotherapy for this condition. The systemic adverse effects are significantly less, the ocular tissues are less traumatised, and general anaesthesia is not necessary.

Scleral buckling surgery and/or vitrectomy is sometimes also performed in more serious cases, what are called stages 4 and 5. Some surgeons recommend surgery for stage 4A, while others do not think surgery should be performed because of the risks and unproven benefit.

Yes sorry to hear about that diagnosis, it must be a pretty tough time. I read this recently which might be of interest too.

Although oxygen therapy has been blamed for ROP progression in the past, many physicians now believe that maximising the oxygen saturation in these critical babies will induce regression in pre-threshold disease. STOP-ROP (Supplemental Therapeutic Oxygen for Prethreshold Retinopathy Of Prematurity), a multicentered national study, found that no benefit was achieved by keeping the oxygen saturation above 95%. However, higher oxygen saturation levels were not found to worsen the disease in prethreshold babies.