Prevalence Of Amblyopia In School Going Children With Refractive Errors

Introduction: Amblyopia is reduced visual acuity even with proper optical correction in one or both eyes , resulting from altered visual development despite ophthalmoscopically normal retinal and optic nerve anatomy. Anisometopia is one of the leading causes of amblyopia. Decreased vision because of uncorrected refractory errors is a major public health problem of school going children in India. School screening programmes have been established in India since 1907. These programmes are primarily aimed at detecting amblyopia and refractive errors. Objectives: To study the prevalence of amblyopia in school going children with refractory errors and to determine the type of refractory error which causes maximum amblyopia. Methods: A descriptive study were 28,852 students between the age group of 6 – 15 years from 65 schools were screened . 540 students were found to have refractive errors and they were further assessed to study the prevalence of amblyopia and associations. Results: Out of 540 students 15.7% had Amblyopia . It was commonly seen in children between the age group of 11 – 13 years 38.3% . Myopia and Myopic astigmatism was seen associated with maximum number of amblyopic children 48.4% and 33.9% respectively. Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of amblyopia in school children with refractive errors which points towards the inadequacies in the present school screening programmes in detecting refractive errors at an earlier stage and thereby preventing development of amblyopia.