Amblyopia: Effectiveness of visual screening for early detection in a comparative study between urban and rural school children

Abstract

Background: Amblyopia an important health problem among young children causing lifelong visual impairment if not treated at correct age. Timely screening of children for amblyopia and its appropriate treatment can prevent the consequences of the problem in their adulthood. Materials and Methods: This study carried out a visual screening of 1234 school children in the age group of 3–12 years of urban and rural schools. All children having vision < 6/6, were called for detailed ophthalmic evaluation at tertiary care Government Hospital. Children who met the inclusion criteria and their best-corrected visual acuity found to be <6/6 on Snellen's chart even after refractive check-up, were assessed for different amblyopia tests to categorize amblyopia into various types and severity. Results: The prevalence of amblyopia in study group was 2.41% (8) in rural and 1.43% (13) in urban schools of 78 children from urban and 37 children from rural referred for detailed Ophthalmic evaluation which includes dropout rate of 24.35% and 35.13% from urban and rural, respectively. The prevalence of isoametropic amblyopia (38.46%) was maximum in urban whereas in rural it was anisometropic amblyopia (37.5%). Among the strabismic amblyopia, most frequent pattern was exotropia in both the groups, moderate degree amblyopia was more in urban and severe degree in rural. Amblyopia was bilateral in most of urban (61.53%) whereas unilateral in most of rural (75%) children. Hypermetropic refractive error was more prevalent in both urban and rural. Conclusion: The prevalence of amblyopia was found more in rural children. The study highlighted differences in the severity of amblyopia, its types, and common refractive errors in both the groups. On the whole, there was no statistically significant difference in all parameters among both the groups.