Do we need to measure the vision of children?

With the advent of the acuity card procedure, it is now possible to measure quantitatively the vision of infants and young children in a routine clinical setting. Over a 19 month period 1177 tests were performed on 586 patients; ages ranged from 0.5 weeks to 23 years. Overall 1102 (93%) were successful, as were 588 of the 627 (94%) tests performed on children under the age of two years when no conventional acuity test is possible. The results serve as a background on which the argument for and against the need to measure the vision of children is considered.