Correctable and non‐correctable visual impairment among young males: a 12‐year prevalence study of the Military Service in Poland

Abstract

Appropriate refractive correction improves visual acuity in most subjects presenting with visual impairment. There was a relatively low prevalence of non-correctable visual impairment in a population of young adults in Poland, and this was mainly due to amblyopia.

Population-Based Screening of Ophthalmic Disorders in a Cohort of Nigerian Army Personnel

“…Ocular health in military populations has important implications for recruit eligibility [1,2] optimal job performance [2], permanent or temporary medical discharge [2] and deployment-related safety [3,4]. Occular health encompasses both visual readiness (the presence of minimum job-required visual acuity) and optical readiness (the acquisition of appropriate optical correction) [5].…”

“…Previous military ocular health surveys, including pre-recruitment [6] and in-service screening eye examinations [2,5,7,8] have reported a huge range in the prevalence of ophthalmic disorders in various military populations (5-83%). The wide variations in reported prevalence have been attributed to differences in the description of specific ophthalmic disorders [1,2], differences in the sources of data (ranging from military health records to screening eye examinations) [1,2,4,6,9,10] and differences in measured ocular health criteria [2]. Existing literature on ophthalmic disorders among the military is dominated by reports on refractive errors, especially myopia [1,7,9,11,13]; however, colour vision defects [1,10], strabismus [1], glaucoma/ocular hypertension [1], sequelae of eye injuries [3, 4] and non-specific disorders of the ocular anterior and posterior segments [2] have all been reported.…”

Characteristics of Refractive Errors in a Population of Adults in the Central Region of Poland

“…Because the present study was a continuation of our previous reports as mentioned earlier 5 we used the methodology of refraction measurements and definitions of refractive errors from the Polish Army national regulations for ophthalmic examination [29,30].…”

“…After allowing for an arbitrary 50% increase in sample size to accommodate possible inefficiencies associated with the sample design, the sample size requirement increased to 991 subjects [6,28]. We decided to define an older adult as person aged ≥ 35 years because in our previous reports conducted on young males in the military population, we considered young adult as person aged 18-34 years [29,30]. We used simple systematic sampling to select our study population.…”

“…Spherical equivalent (SER) refractive error, defined as sphere plus half cylinder, was applied for myopia and hyperopia calculations. According to the Polish Army regulations myopia was Astigmatism was considered if the cylinder was ≥ 0.5 dioptres [29,30]. Anisometropia was defined as difference of SER greater than 1.0 dioptres (D) between the right and the left eyes.…”