A review: the determination of visual acuity in infants and preliterate children

In the field of pediatric ophthalmology, assessment of visual acuity is important and necessary in determining treatment plans for children with both functional as well as organic amblyopia, and also to monitor the effect and success of treatment.We shall review the qualitative/subjective tests, as well as the objective/quantitative tests described in the literature for assessing visual acuity, and we shall outline the complexity of vision and its impact on the objective tests.The main purpose of our paper is to present our own scheme of determining visual acuities in infants and pre-literate children, a scheme we believe is simple, effective, implies no extra costs, applicable to infants and young children, and almost infallible in detecting severe amblyopia.