Abstract :
Objectives: To assess the prevalence of various refractive errors in children attending ophthalmology out patient department of a tertiary hospital.
Materials and Methods: 173 children with defective vision were assessed for refractive errors during June 2021- June 2022.
Results: Females accounted for the majority of children (61.6%). Most common type of refractive error was myopia (52%) followed by hyperopia (27.2%) and the least common was astigmatism(20.8%). Myopic astigmatism was the most common variety in cases of astigmatic cases(72.2%). The frequency of myopia increased with increasing age of children. This association was found to be statistically significant (p
Conclusions: Refractive errors when uncorrected can lead to amblyopia and strabismus and hence school based and community based screening is necessary to get a real estimate of the burden of uncorrected refractive errors.
Keyword :
Children, Myopia.