This site is intended to provide information on the associated conditions of cerebral palsy.
Vision and hearing problems are more common in people with cerebral palsy than in the general population. Differences in the left and right eye muscles often cause the eyes to be misaligned. This condition, called strabismus, causes double vision; in children, however, the brain often adapts by ignoring signals from one eye. Untreated, this can lead to very poor vision in one eye and can interfere with certain visual skills, such as judging distance. Because of this, physicians may recommend surgery to correct strabismus. Recent studies have shown that 65-70 percent of children with cerebral palsy also have strabismus.
Some children with cerebral palsy may have hemianopia, a condition marked by impaired vision or blindness in half of the visual field in one eye. If the impairment in the right or left half of the visual field is present in both eyes, the condition is called homonymous hemianopia. Put simply, this means that the child cannot see anything in the entire left or right visual field in both eyes. Because both eyes are affected more or less equally, the location of the problem must be at the optic chiasm (the part of the brain where the optic nerves partially cross) or further back along the visual pathways.