There have been many case reports on so-called congenital nystagmus, but only a few papers have deal with the statistics and pathophysiology. May be that is the reason that some patients with congenital nystagmus are simply diagnosed as having a visual defect, and some have been sent to a school for the blind.
Recently, our department has done precise neurootological examinations on 2, 400 subjects. Congenital nystagmus was found in 84 of them (3.5%); 45 had the jerking type, 19 the pendular jerking type, 11 the pendular type and 9 the latent type of nystagmus. The male/female ratio was 2:1.
The congenital nystagmus in these 84 cases is analyzed statistically.
