Refractive Errors in School going Children in Kashmir

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Large number of studies on the prevalence ofrefractive errors in various population groups have been done.Refractive errors, are by far the commonest cause of defectivevision in school children around the world. Undetected anduncorrected refractive errors are particularly a significantproblem in school children. With these rationales this studywas undertaken in schools of Kashmir with the objective toassess the magnitude of refractive errors.Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study wasconducted in schools of Kashmir valley from june 2016 tomay 2017. Sample size was calculated to be 1110. The 6 to16years children of selected schools of Kashmir valley whowere present on the day of the interview were interviewed andexamined. Snellen chart, pinhole, a trial box, a trial frame,self-illuminated vision box and streak Retinoscope were usedto detect refractive error. MS excel package and SPSS11.5software was use for analysis.Results: Out of 1110 cases (2220 eyes),856(77.12%) caseswere emmetropic, 56 (5.04%) cases had hyperopia of 0.25Dto 1.75D whereas only 4(0.36%) cases had a hyperopia ofequal to or greater than 2.0D. Myopia was the most commonobserved refractive error. 188(16.94%) cases had a myopiaof 0.25D to 1.75D and 6 (0.54%) cases had a myopia of2.0D to 3.75D.No case had myopia of equal to or greaterthan 4.0D(Table-V) Myopic astigmatism was seen in 22(1.98%) cases and hyperopic Astigmatismin 10(0.9%)cases.Conclusion: Refractive error was a significant cause of visualimpairment among school children and screening of schoolchildren plays a major role in detecting refractive errors.