International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | October 2022 | Vol 10 | Issue 10 Page 1 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Choudhary S et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2022 Oct;10(10):xxx-xxx www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Original Research Article Prevalence of refractive errors and their association with socio demographic characteristics in pediatric patients attending tertiary eye care centre Sadaf Choudhary 1 , Sanjay Kai 1 , Sachit Mahajan 1 , Bhavna Sahni 2 , Kiran Bala 2 * INTRODUCTION Childhood ocular morbidity, of which refractive errors form a significant fraction, is defined as a condition in the study subject, recognized or suspected, ocular or vision abnormality, which requires treatment or surveillance. 1 A fact quoted by world health organization (WHO) that “Every minute a child goes blind”, reflects the ever- increasing global burden of childhood blindness. Even though the proportion of infants and school aged children with visual impairment is less than 5% worldwide, yet they are included in bunch of 20% of individuals with visual impairment after adjusting disability adjusted life years (DALYs). 2 The available data is suggestive of the fact that the difference in prevalence of childhood blindness between the wealthiest and the poorest countries of the world may be fifteen-fold, ranging from as low as around 0.3 per 1000 children aged 0-5 years in high economic nations to 1.5/1000 children in developing countries. If this very correlation is used to estimate the prevalence of blindness in children, the number of blind children in the world is estimated to be 1.4 million. According to W.H.O. 1 Department of Ophthalmology, 2 Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India Received: 10 August 2022 Accepted: 29 August 2022 *Correspondence: Dr. Kiran Bala, E-mail: kiranlachala@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Background: Uncorrected refractive errors are one of the major culprits of visual impairment among children in our country. Children included in school going age groups i.e., 6-16 years, represent 25% of population in developing countries. They fall in the category of preventable age group for correction of refractive errors. This paper describes the salient features and results of the cross-sectional study conducted to determine the prevalence of refractive errors and their association with socio demographic characteristics in pediatric population objective were to study the prevalence of refractive errors and their association with socio demographic characteristics in pediatric patients attending tertiary eye care centre. Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted for a period of one year among children in 0-16 years age group and a total of 444 patients were included. All children were examined by ophthalmologists and refraction was done by optometrists. Data was analysed using web-based software open epi version 3.01. Results: Prevalence of refractive errors was found to be 29.5%. Amongst the socio demographic factors, there was a significant association of age and literacy with refractive errors whereas gender and residence were not found to be significant. Conclusions: Refractive errors are an important preventable cause of childhood ocular morbidity. Schools are an excellent platform to educate children and their parents regarding eye care and signs of ocular morbidity due to refractive errors. Health education activities in schools need to be intensified. Keywords: Refractive error, Myopia, Hypermetropia, Astigmatism DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20222342