Impaired fine motor skills in children following extraction of a dense congenital or infantile unilateral cataract.

Purpose: To evaluate fine motor ability in children treated for unilateral congenital or infantile cataract.

Methods: Twenty-three children 3-13 years of age who were treated for unilateral congenital or infantile cataract and 38 age-similar control children were enrolled. Children completed five fine motor skills tasks (unimanual dexterity, bimanual dexterity, drawing trail, aiming, catching) from the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2. Raw scores were converted into standardized scores, with higher scores indicating better performance.

Results: Compared with controls, children treated for unilateral cataract scored lower on drawing trail (P = 0.009), aiming (P = 0.009), and catching (P < 0.001) but not on unimanual (P = 0.77) or bimanual dexterity (P = 0.31). Poorer affected eye visual acuity was moderately related to poorer performance for unimanual dexterity (r = -0.47; P = 0.025), bimanual dexterity (r = -0.50; P = 0.014), and catching (r = -0.41; P = 0.051). Those with a poor visual outcome (>0.6 logMAR) had worse performance than those with a good visual outcome (≤0.6 logMAR) for all tasks (all P values, 0.008-0.09) except aiming. Cataract type (congenital, 9; infantile, 14) and sensory fusion by Worth 4-Dot testing at 33 cm (pass, 10; fail, 13) had no effect on fine motor performance (all P values, 0.12-0.98).

Conclusions: In our study cohort, fine motor deficits were found in children treated for congenital or infantile unilateral cataract.