Pattern of Refractive Errors and Strabismus in Children

Refractive errors(RE) is an optical defect that reduces the ordinary imaginative and prescient and is a prime contributor to visual impairment, especially among school youngsters, and most of the time it remains undiagnosed for lengthy intervals leading to visionary disabilities in children. Other condition is strabismus that is when eyes do not pair as depicting misalignment, it seems as if the two eyes are not fixating on the identical region on the equal time. Objectives: To determine the pattern of refractive errors & strabismus in children. Methods: 1889 patients were observed, children of age ranging from 1 month to 14 years in Ophthalmology department of Arif Memorial Teaching Hospital, Lahore between the year 2018 to 2019. A self-structure Performa was utilized to gather information. Ocular misalignment was evaluated by cover test and the Hirschberg light reflex. The data was analyzed by SPSS 24.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago,USA). Results: Total 1889 children examined, 18.7% were less than 1 year, 54.7% were between 1 to 4 years, and 26.6%were 4 to 14 years. In those children prevalence of Refractive error was 37.6% in which 18.8% had hypermetropia, 11.2% had astigmatism and 7.6% had myopia. In the data of 1889 patients, 18.7% were less than 1 year in which 79 had strabismus out of which 11.6% are alternating exotropia, 5.4% are alternating exotropia, 4.0% are exotropia, and 1.4% were exotropia. While 54.68% patients were between 1 to 4 years, in which 29.7% had squint. 26.57% patients were between 4 to 14 years, 157 had strabismus. In those patients 13.9% were alternating exotropia, 8.2% were exotropia, 7.4% were alternating exotropia, and 1.8% were exotropia. Conclusions: Hypermetropia appears significantly general in the children of age that is less than 1 year. While in strabismus, alternating esotropia is more commonplace in our study, but it does not suggests any significance with age.