A safety review of drugs used for the treatment of retinopathy of prematurity.

Surgical approaches to ROP are not without side effects. However, most of the proposed pharmacologic interventions can also raise specific concerns. In particular, these approaches follow a curative paradigm and are proposed in patients once the disease has progressed, with an effectiveness that is often smaller than expected. A goal in the treatment of ROP would be moving the paradigm toward a preventive approach that could be potentially effective in treating extremely low birth weight preterm infants before ROP becomes manifest.