Hospital prevalence and major causes of low vision in a tertiary care centre in South India: A Hospital record based study Shimna C P1,*, Jacob Jasmine Mary2, Thomas Pramod3 1Assistant Professor, Dept. of Ophthalmology, Dr Somervell Memorial CSI Medial College, Karakonam, Kerala 2Professor, Dept. of Ophthalmology, Dr Somervell Memorial CSI Medial College, Karakonam, Kerala 3Associate Professor, Dept. of Community Medicine, Believers Church Medical College, Thiruvalla, Kerala, India *Corresponding Author: Email: shimna1978@gmail.com
Online published on 24 September, 2018. Abstract Aims To determine the hospital prevalence as well as the low vision causes among patients coming to a tertiary care centre Settings and Design Retrospective study was conducted by review of files of patients who presented to the Ophthalmology OPD from September 2013 to February 2014 Material and Methods Records of 4989 patients in the 20–60 years age group who presented to the Ophthalmology OPD were collected and data obtained. Patients with a visual acuity of < 6/18 (20/60) to ≥ 3/60 (20/400) in the best eye were included in the low vision group according to the WHO definition.3 Results There were 102 patients with low vision who attended the OPD during the study period. There were 36 (35%) male and 66 (65%) female patients among the low vision patients. The low vision causes were retinal diseases (72%), amblyopia (15%), corneal opacity (9%) and glaucoma (4%) Conclusion Hospital prevalence of low vision was estimated to be 2.19% (SE-1.43). Among these patients, the causes of low vision were detected to be Retinal diseases like Diabetic Retinopathy, Hypertensive Retinopathy and pathological myopia, amblyopia, corneal opacity and glaucoma. Top Keywords Low vision, Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), Age Related Macular Degeneration (ARMD), Hypertensive Retinopathy (HTR), Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). Top |