An eight-year-old girl in the United States has been diagnosed with a brain tumour after an eye exam and the optometrist followed up to urge the family to get help for their daughter.
According to a story in People magazine, Annabeth Baah went for her yearly physical in May.
The doctor noticed her left eye was weak, so suggested she might need an eye exam and possibly glasses.
That eye exam revealed glasses were the least of her worries.
Mr Jeffrey Cohen, an optometrist in the Greater Albany Area of New York, was concerned to see the optic nerve in her eye was very swollen. He told her family they needed to take action.
“The eye doctor just took one look and immediately said, ‘Hey, you guys have to go to the emergency room,’ ” recalls father Kwabena Baah Kwabena
“He said, ‘You have to go tonight.’ He was very insistent.”
After spending five hours at an emergency room in Poughkeepsie, New York the family were sent home.
So concerned was Cohen that he called the family to check in.
On finding out Annabeth was not admitted to the hospital he advised the family to take her to the ophthalmology department at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Westchester, New York.
“This wasn’t something we could ignore or get to tomorrow,” he told People.
Doctors there ran tests on Annabeth and revealed that the seemingly healthy eight-year-old had a brain tumour.
She had surgery to remove a craniopharyngioma, a large but benign tumour.
Without that eye exam the tumour could have been undetected for years and grown to create more pressure in her brain, and she could have lost her vision.
