LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, building on its "...great strength..." in ophthalmology, has established The Vision Center as its sixth 'center of excellence' to "...develop, implement and disseminate innovative strategies for preventing and treating blindness and other visual disorders in children," according to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles President and CEO Richard D. Cordova.
The Vision Center has been organized under one "...administrative and budgetary umbrella..." with the formation of an advisory board, reporting to Mr. Cordova, who will participate as a member of the advisory board with Vice President and Chief of Surgery Henri R. Ford, M.D., who is board chairman; Founding Benefactors Alyce van Wyck and Michael D. Dalany; Associate Vice President, Finance, Keith M. Hobbs; and Associate Vice President, Major and Planned Gifts David D. Watts. Ex officio members of the board are Mark S. Borchert, M.D., who is head of the Division of Ophthalmology at Childrens Hospital; Cynde R. Herman, Ph.D., who is administrative director of the Department of Surgery at Childrens; Mauricette Montredon, who is administrative director of The Vision Center; and Kenneth J. Wildes, Jr., who is vice president, communications, at the hospital.
The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is now a national, indeed international, referral center for children afflicted with complex forms of eye disease, providing the full range of inpatient and outpatient services, with subspecialty programs in cornea and refractive surgery, oculoplastics, optic nerve hypoplasia, retinoblastoma, retinal disorders, the largest pediatric ophthalmology program in the United States, neurophysiology of vision and non-invasive technology. Unique medical genetic consults and evaluations are available to detect hereditary eye diseases.
The Vision Center, together with the Institute for Families, also offers counseling and support to patient families facing the "...devastating diagnosis..." of visual impairment of their child.
"Vision disorders are the fourth most prevalent class of disability in the United States and the most common handicap in American children," said Dr. Ford, adding that "...vision impairment significantly impacts a child's ability to explore the surrounding environment, learn and develop relationships with family members and peers. Early intervention is vital to correct, or alleviate, vision disorders in order to give the child the best possible quality of life."
The Vision Center at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is the largest pediatric ophthalmology program in the United States, and it is the only program in the country with expertise and treatment and research programs in virtually every pediatric ophthalmologic subspecialty area with the creation of six new institutes: the Retina Institute, the Cornea Institute, the Eye Birth Defects Institute, the Vision Development Institute, the Eye Technology Institute and the Orbit and Eye Movement Institute.
* The Retina Institute treats infants with Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), the second leading cause of blindness in infants; retinal trauma and detachment; retinal degenerations, such as retinitis pigmentosa; and retinoblastoma, a rare childhood cancer of the eye, which predominantly affects infants and young children under five years of age. The Retinoblastoma Program at Childrens Hospital is the only one of its kind in the western United States based in a pediatric hospital. Nearly one-fifth of all retinoblastoma cases diagnosed annually in the United States are treated at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Medical Directors: Thomas C. Lee, M.D., and A. Linn Murphree, M.D. * The Cornea Institute annually performs the largest number of pediatric cornea and cataract surgeries in the United States, including 25-30 corneal transplants per year, and it is one of the few programs in the world with expertise in corneal transplants for infants. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles was the first hospital nationwide to implant an artificial cornea in a pediatric patient. The Pediatric Corneal Refractive Surgery Center offers state-of-the-art facilities in which to perform refractive and corneal surgery, including LASIK, under general anesthesia. Medical Director: Jonathan C. Song, M.D. * The Eye Birth Defects Institute treats and studies Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (ONH), which occurs when the child's optic nerves fail to develop fully during early pregnancy, resulting in reduced vision or blindness. It is one of a number of non-hereditary birth defects of the eye, and it is the leading cause of blindness in infants in the United States. (Children with ONH also have abnormal nerve connections in several areas of the brain, which often result in abnormal growth, hormone deficiencies, seizures, cognitive deficits, and learning disabilities.) Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is the leading research center in the epidemiology and management of this and other devastating birth defects, including other optic nerve disorders, colobomas, microphthalmous, ophthalmic cysts and more. Medical Director: Mark S. Borchert, M.D. * The Vision Development Institute treats and studies the most common vision disorders in children due to abnormal development of binocularity, depth perception and sensory integration -- functions that largely develop in the first year of life and ultimately impact learning and social development. The Neurophysiology of Vision Program focuses on optimizing treatment for children with these vision disorders by studying the connections between the developing brain and vision, how eyesight changes during infancy and which interventions are most effective at different stages of this process. Current research includes the study of how the eyes work together to develop vision in infancy with state-of-the-art technology available at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, such as functional MRI scanning and electrophysiology. Medical Director: Kristina Tarczy-Hornoch, M.D., D.Phil. * The Eye Technology Institute focuses on developing better diagnostic and treatment tools for ocular disorders and other medical conditions that impact sight. (The eye provides a window to internal structures, including the nervous system, blood vessels and tissue fluids; these structures can be analyzed with painless image processing techniques and spectroscopy.) This program has pioneered the use of spectroscopy to measure glucose levels in eye, which could replace needle tests to determine blood sugar levels in diabetics, addressing the second leading cause of blindness in this country, and it has developed technologies to measure chemotherapy and antimicrobial levels in the brain, intracranial pressure, abnormal metabolic products in the retina that may lead to macular degeneration and real-time detection of water contaminants. Medical Director: Mark S. Borchert, M.D. * The Orbit and Eye Movement Institute offers a comprehensive program of treatment and research into strabismus, a common condition in children in which one eye cannot focus with the other because of an imbalance of the eye muscles, resulting in the inability of the brain to use the information from the two eyes, normally. The Institute treats children with strabismus; amblyopia or "lazy eye; "and related conditions. Treatment regimens include surgery, orthoptics, prisms and glasses. Medical Director: Angela N. Buffenn, M.D., MPH.
The other 'centers of excellence' at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles include the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases, the Childrens Orthopaedic Center, the Center for Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, The Heart Institute and the Center for Fetal and Neonatal Medicine.
Founded in 1901, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has been treating the most seriously ill and injured children in Los Angeles for more than a century, and it is acknowledged throughout the United States and around the world for its leadership in pediatric and adolescent health. Childrens Hospital is one of America's premier teaching hospitals, affiliated with the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California since 1932. It is a national leader in pediatric research.
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles treats 62,000 patients a year in its Emergency Department. It admits more than 11,000 children a year to the hospital, with almost 50-percent of those admissions children under four years of age. There are more than 287,000 visits a year to its 29 outpatient clinics; nearly 5,000 visits at community sites through its Division of Adolescent Medicine. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is able to offer the optimum in multidisciplinary care, with more than 100 pediatric subspecialty services.
Investigators at The Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles are working to create a world in which all children are healthy -- a world in which they are no longer threatened by such diseases as cancer, congenital heart defects, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, epilepsy, immune deficiencies and respiratory disorders. They ask basic questions about human biology, find new ways to see inside the body, explore genetic mysteries, develop promising drug treatments and test preventive strategies -- scientific inquiries that benefit both children and adults. The Saban Research Institute is among the largest and most productive pediatric research facilities in the United States, with 93 investigators at work on 200 laboratory studies, clinical trials and community-based research and health services. It is one of the few freestanding research centers in the nation to combine scientific laboratory inquiry with patient clinical care -- dedicated exclusively to children -- and its base of knowledge is widely considered to be among the best in pediatric medicine.
Since 1990, U.S. News & World Report and its panel of board-certified pediatricians have named Childrens Hospital Los Angeles one of the top pediatric facilities in the nation.
Visit our website: www.ChildrensHospitalLA.org