Abstract

The aim of the present study was to find out awareness about myopia among population of school going students. Material & methods: The study was a school based cross sectional observational study conducted in selected schools in urban and rural area of district of Cachar in Assam, enrolling a total 250 students in the age group of 6 to 15 years. All the study subjects were clinically examined with torch-light. Visual acuity was measured using Snellen’s Chart. Students were placed 6 meters apart from Snellen’s Chart and asked to read the chart. From the findings, the students were grouped as myopic and non-myopic. Students who were not having 6/6 vision in at least one eye were primarily considered as myopic. Results: 28.8% and 30.4% of the children were in the age group of 6-8 years and 9-11 years respectively while 40.8% were in the age group of 12-15 years. Mean age of study subjects was 10.55±2.86 years. Out of 250 children 135 (54.0%) were boys and 115 (46.0%) were girls. Maximum students were in class 9th (n=30; 12.0%) followed by class 5th (n=29; 11.6%). In class 1st and 7th there were 25 students each while in class 2nd, 4th and 8th there were 24 students each. Out of 250 students 134 (53.6%) were from urban area while 116 (46.4%) were from rural area. Family history of refractive error was present in 53 (21.2%) children. Headache was the most common complaint reported by 37 (14.8%) students followed by blurring of vision (28; 11.2%) and occasional pain in eyes (n=27; 10.8%). In our study, prevalence of myopia was 16.4% in students while hypermetropia was seen in 9 (3.6%) subjects and astigmatism was seen in 4 (1.6%) subjects. 10% of the students had mild degree of myopia, 3.6% had moderate and 2.8% had severe myopia. Out of 82 eyes 66 (80.5%) eyes had simple myopia, 4 (4.8%) eyes had simple myopic astigmatism and 2 (3.6%) eyes had compound myopic astigmatism while 4 (4.8%) eyes had pathological myopia. Conclusion: Simple myopia is more common in school going children. Majority of the cases were detected only during the screening of the students. So, majority of them go unnoticed, making more students visually handicapped. But with the co-operation of the teachers, school authorities and medical staff, affected can be treated with proper optical correction, thereby reducing morbidity due to myopia.

Description