Prevalence of refractive error among school aged children attending the outpatient department of a tertiary eye care centre

Abstract

Uncorrected refractive error is the leading cause of vision impairment globally and this in turn can have immediate and long-term consequences in children and adults. Our aims is to study prevalence of refractive error among school aged children attending the eye outpatient department.This is a retrospective cross-sectional study involving children aged 6 to 15 years presented between June to December 2018 were retrieved. The data was entered in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and analyzed. Results: out of 561 children 185 children were having refractive error in atleast on eye. Refractive error was more prevalent in girls (52.97%) as compared to boys (47.03%) and common in 11 to 15 year age group. The most common refractive error was myopia. Conclusion: The prevalence of refractive error was more common in 11 to 15 age group and with females preponderance. Myopia was the commonest type of refractive error followed by astigmatism and hypermetropia. The burden of undetected refractive error is high and needs to be addressed. Children and parents need to be educated.