Refractive Errors and its Associated Factors among Undergraduate Medical Students in Kathmandu

Abstract

Refractive error is a defect in the optical system of the eye which prevents light from being brought to a single point focus on the retina, thus reducing normal vision. This optical defect is the second most common cause of visual impairment globally as well in Nepal. At present, there are 285 million visually impaired people in the world. An estimated 4 out of 5 visual impairment (80%) can be prevented or cured, uncorrected refractive errors are the leading cause (42%) followed by cataract (33%). A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted to determine the proportion of undergraduate medical students with refractive errors in Nepal Medical College, and to identify factors associated with it. A total of 210 medical students volunteered for this study, with 100 males (47.6%) and 110 females (52.4%). The age of these students were between 18 to 26 years, with an average of 20.5 years. The proportion of medical students with refractive error was slightly more than half (51.4%), with simple myopia being the leading type (42.9%), followed by astigmatism (7.1%) and simple hypermetropia (1.4%). Parental history of refractive error was observed to be significantly associated with that of the medical students. There was also a significant association between refractive error and the daily use of mobile phones and laptops. However, years spent in medical education were not observed to be significant.

Ocular disorders and associated factors among the first year health professional students at a medical college in Kathmandu

“…7 -12 Refractive error was the most common ocular morbidity reported in our study, occurring in 60 (52.2 %) students. This study concurs with a study from Nepal which reported a prevalence of 51.4% of refractive error among medical students, 32 and between 54% to 74% from studies in India. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] Studies by Nwosu et al 13 and Maurya et al 16 reported a prevalence of refractive error as 63.0% and 39.8% respectively.…”

Preference and attitude towards refractive errors correction methods among Qassim University students

“…Our results were higher than reported in some previous studies including study conducted in Malaysia showed a prevalence of refractive errors among university students by 32.24%(Gopalakrishnan et al, 2011), while Salih, (2018) showed that 33% of the students in Al-Mustansiriya Medical College, Iraq had refractive errors. Moreover, our results were higher than reported in two studies conducted in India (48.3%, 47.4%)(Patel et al, 2019; Kshatri et al, 2016), Nepal (51.4%)(Rizyal et al, 2019) and Pakistan (47%)(Parveen et al, 2016).…”