EYE TESTING of reception-age children across town found more than 300 vision problems in children last year.

Ophthalmologists from Warrington Hospital went out to visit all 2,645 reception age children in the town during the last school year, conducting tests that diagnosed eyesight issues in more than 300 kids.

With the new school year now well underway, the department is keen to highlight to importance of getting kids eyesight tested.

Deputy head orthoptist Sonia MacDiarmid said: “These numbers are just for where we’ve gone out to do vision screenings with reception classes without even talking about the thousands of children that we see anyway.

“If these children are diagnosed with a problem they might have to come back every six weeks for their treatment so we could be seeing them from when they’re born right up to when they’re discharged to community opticians.

“These conditions are ones where you only have a short window for treatment with a national recommendation for the ages of four and five – if they are referred as a fast track like we have they can start the treatment and get the best outcome for them.

“It is important as once you pass that window of being treated in the first eight years of life then it’s very difficult to treat after that.”

If problems with youngsters’ vision go untreated then it could lead to problem in education and in later life.

Consultant ophthalmologist Graham Freeman said: “Quite a lot of the time you will see adults coming into the clinic saying they a lazy eye or they didn’t wear there glasses or a patch when they were a child and a lot of them have problems with depth perception and their general motor skills aren’t quite so good as a result.

“If their overall vision is reduced then children may not be able to see a textbook or a whiteboard in school so their learning is dramatically impacted.

Ms MacDiarmid added: “We have a lot of teenagers who come and haven’t worn their glasses or a patch as a child and they want to go into the armed forces or a driving jobs but the guidelines are so strict.”