بررسي همه گيرشناسي شيوع عيوب انكساري در دانش آموزان دوره راهنمايي 12 - 16 ساله در شهر مشهد

Prevalence of myopia in teen aged students in Mashhad city

According to high prevalence of refractive error in teen age children and its complications such as amblyopia and defect in education, it seems to be necessary to determine the prevalence of this disease in our region for further preventive policy. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of refractive errors in Iranian guidance school students, 1830 of 20000 guidance school students were selected by utilizing clustering method and their visual acuity were measured by using Snellen charts. Cycloplegic autorefraction of the low visual acuity was measured by the Nidek 8000 autorefractometer and types of errors were determined. Five hundred sixty one students (30/7/.) with significant refractive errors were found that 457 students (24.4/.) were ignored about their visual problems. 104 students (6.5/.) wore glasses to cover their refractive errors. In 457 cases, myopia and astigmatism was the most conventional refractive errors (160 students, 8.4"/.), and the next was hypermetropia (91 students, 5.0ʹ/.). Myopia was the least (69 students, 3.8ʹ/.) that only 5.6"/. of them distinguished before.In our study, not only myopia but also astigmatism that is associated with other refractive errors is the most prevalence refractive errors in our study. It shows the importance of careful screening examination.