In a message to All dated 05 Jun 97 10:50, Buddy Brannan - Kb5Elv wrote:
 BB> Hey, that was great stuff! I now know
 BB> a lot more about ROP than I ever
 BB> did. I have it, too, and I was born in
 BB> 1973. They tell me it wasn't so
 BB> common then, but I have it anyway. I
 BB> always wondered about that...I used
 BB> to have fairly good light perception
 BB> as a kid, but now, if I have any at
 BB> all, it's not at all useful.
Your experience re your vision loss is not at all uncommon among 
us ROP veterans, anecdotally, at least. As I said in my last post, 
more and more of us are having our eyes bum out on us as we get 
into middle-age and beyond.
Yes, by 1973, the incidence of R.O.P. was not nearly as common in 
the U.S. as it was prior to 1953 when the cause of R.O.P. was 
supposedly definitively determined (see a previous message).  IN 
the U.K., however, the incidence of R.O.P. did not diminish after 
1953. While it could be argued that this indicates that excess 
oxygen caused the condition (and, indeed, as I've said, it is one 
of the factors leading to some R.O.P. cases), a retrospective 
study published in the U.K. a number of years ago of premature 
births in the U.S. and the consequences of oxygen restriction in 
neonatal units after 1953 indicated that for every infant who 
survived (and, if I remember correctly, did not go blind from 
R.O.P.), sixteen infants died. This was a statistical calculation.
contribute to the cond
It was not that doctors were deliberately trying to kill infants. 
Rather, they did not see the consequences of oxygen restriction 
because of the way deaths among premies were counted at the time 
(deaths during the first twenty-four hours after birth were 
assumed to be relatively common and expected among premies and 
thus weren't counted in U.S. statistics dealing with the effects 
of oxygen restriction). Nevertheless, this certainly shows how 
much blindness is feared and the lengths to which medical 
personnel would go to prevent it.
Of course, today we have accurate devices for measuring levels of 
blood oxygenation. Nevertheless, in the U.S., at least, physicians 
walk a tightrope between not giving a baby enough oxygen 
(resulting in R.O.P. at best and C.P. at worst) and giving 
sufficient oxygen to be somewhat certain of eliminating C.P. at 
the risk of the infant contracting R.O.P.  Apparently, in the 
U.K., this is not as much an issue as they tend to err on the side 
of excess oxygen in order to be more certain of a healthy baby at 
the risk of R.O.P. There was one medical conference here in the 
U.S. years ago wherein a British physician was asked the proper 
oxygen level for premature neonates. He replied angrily:  "Enough 
to keep the baby pink!"
I take some of the foregoing from an article in the medical 
journal Pediatrics for February, 1984 (I think I even have Braille 
copies somewhere around here) and some from a book by Dr. 
Silberman entitled:  "Retrolentalfibroplasia:  A MOdern Parable".  
It's a very angry textbook in which Dr. Silberman decries the lack 
of scientific method in the early researches on RLF/ROP.
So goes the world!
Mike Freeman
Internet: mikef@pacifier.com
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