غربالگري تنبلي چشم در كودكان 6 تا 10 ساله

Background and Objectives:Amblyopia is an acquired deficiency in eye vision that is caused by an existing ocular disorder in the children. The main clinical conditions that lead to amblyopia include disorders that cause blurred images on the retina of one or both eyes. Strabismus is also one of the main causes. Because of its relatively high prevalence in pediatric ophthalmology (2-5% in different studies) and for its potential risks on losing oneʹs vision, necessity of early diagnosis and adequate treatment becomes evident. The study was conducted to screen amblyopia among children aged 6-10 years in Urmia. Materials and Methods: In this study about 55000 cases were screened by Snellen charts. For diagnosis of actual patients and determination of causes of their illnesses, we used gold standard examinations with ophthalmologist. After that SPSS v9.0 soft ware was used for description and analysis of data. Results: 2955 out of children (5.3%) in the screening process met the referral criteria. Mean visual acuity of this group had a significant difference compared with those who did not have referring criteria. Also the rate of wearing eyeglasses in this group was more than others (p<0.00001). Despite the wearing of eyeglasses, correction in vision was not complete. Finally, 58.1% out of the referred cases had not got amblyopia but the remained (41.9%) were diagnosed as amblyopia. So its prevalence in the children aged 6-10 in Urmia determined as 2.2%. This ratio had significant differences from the gender point of view (2% in females vs. 2.4% in males, p<0.00001). Refractive error with 75.2% was the main cause of amblyopia. Other causes were such as strabismus, eye anomalies, ptosis, opacity and idiopathic. Conclusion: It seems that the results of this study are comparable with other studies and indicate high prevalence of amblyopia in these age groups as well as its preventability and adequate treatment with early diagnosis of causes.