Evaluation of a new test for the diagnosis of congenital dyschromatopsia in children: the Colour Vision Evaluation Test.

PURPOSE: to evaluate the validity, reproducibility and feasibility of the "COLOUR VISION EVALUATION TEST" (CVET) for the diagnosis of congenital dyschromatopsia.

DESIGN: prospective, monocentric, sensitivity and specificity analysis study comparing the CVET to the Farnsworth 15 Hue standard test (15 Hue STF).

METHODS: 155 children from the Paediatric University Hospital of Nice were screened (both eyes) using the Ishihara's pseudoisochromatic cards, which allowed dividing them into a dyschromatic group and a control group. All children underwent twice the 15 Hue STF and the CVET with at least seven days between both series of tests.

RESULTS: patient's mean age was 7.56 ± 3.51 years in the dyschromatic group, and 8.92 ± 2.9 years in the control group. At the first evaluation, the sensitivity and specificity were 95.7% and 96.4%, respectively for the CVET and 75% and 58.9%, respectively for the 15 Hue STF (p <0.001). The reproducibility of the CVET was 100% while that of the 15 Hue STF was 88.4% (p=0.01). The mean test explanation duration was 18.8 seconds for the CVET and 17.7 seconds for the 15 Hue STF (p=0.3). In the dyschromatic group, the mean duration of the CVET was always significantly longer than that of the 15 Hue STF (p <0.001). The children subjectively preferred to undergo the CVET rather than the 15 Hue STF in 84.6% of cases (p <0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: the CVET is a rapid, reliable and reproducible test for the diagnosis of congenital dyschromatopsia. It is accessible to young children.