Nothing is more normal than appearing with red eyes in a photo taken with a flash. When this is triggered, the pupil does not have time to retract and the flash illuminates the back of our eye, made up of blood vessels. So when Julie Fitzgerald, an American mom living in Illinois, noticed that her son still had one red eye and one white eye in the photos, she sensed that something was wrong. After some internet research, she discovered that a white pupil in the photos could be the sign of retinoblastoma, a malignant tumor of the retina that mainly affects children under 5 years old.
So she took her son to the ophthalmologist and the ophthalmologist confirmed the mother’s diagnosis. The cancer was already attacking 75% of the boy’s left eye and had to be removed. But it saved his life: according to doctors, the tumor in the eye could have affected the brain and the blood if the parents had not noticed it so early.
Leukocoria (the white spots that appear on the pupil) is a warning sign that allows early detection of retinoblastoma because it occurs at the onset of the disease. But it is not always present in the photos, it all depends on the angle of view.
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