Status of Eye Health among School Children in South India - Sankara Nethralaya School Children Eye Examination Study (SN-SEES).

Purpose: To define the prevalence of visual impairment, refractive errors and other ocular problems among school children from the public schools of South India between 2011 and 2015.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional study covering 296 schools in the three districts of Tamil Nadu. The school eye screening included visual acuity assessment, external eye examination, objective and subjective refraction, and direct ophthalmoscopy. Vision impairment was defined as logMAR visual acuity of less than 0.2 (Snellen equivalent of 6/9).

Results

A total of 91545 children were included with a mean age of 12.9 ± 3.0 years. The prevalence of vision impairment was found to be 5.67% (95%CI 5.53-5.83) and spherical equivalent refractive error was 4.42% (95%CI 4.29-4.56). The prevalence of myopia, hyperopia, and 'other refractive errors' was found to be 3.57% (95%CI 4.01-4.27), 0.03% (95%CI 0.02-0.04), and 0.82% (95%CI 0.76-0.88) respectively. Strabismus, retina and neuro-ophthalmology-related abnormalities, ptosis, and corneal scars were the common ocular problems. In the rural region the prevalence of the refractive errors and the ocular problems were 2.92% and 2.32%, respectively.

Conclusion

The study reports a lower prevalence of refractive errors and myopia in this population, much lesser compared to other reported studies from India. Rural regions exhibit an equal need for both refractive services and management of other ocular problems.