Evaluation of color blindness prevalence in male medical students of Mashhad medical school

Color vision has an important role in daily activities and also learning special talents in different jobs, especially in the field of medicine. However, they are many people all over the world that has no insight into their color blindness and choose the study fields that are completely dependent on vision. Due to the importance of color vision in the field of medicine, we conducted this study to evaluate the prevalence of color blindness in Mashhad medical school, Mashhad, Iran.

A total number of 200 male medical students from June to September 2016 were enrolled in this study by a simple sampling method. Ishihara test was applied for the evaluation of color vision. Required data were written down in questionnaire sheets, which were designed for this study. A T-test was used to compare the mean value of quantitative data. Chi-square test and Fisher exact test were used to compare the qualitative data in different groups.

The results of the current study showed that among 200 participants who were evaluated in this study, 8 of them (4%) suffered from color blindness. Among these 8 color blinded cases, 6 of them (75%) had the insight into their disease while 2 of them (25%) had no insight into their condition. Moreover, the results of evaluating the type of color blindness showed that 7 of them had green-red color blindness, while 1 of them had complete color blindness.

Comparing results of the current study with previous ones, we concluded that color blindness has a lower prevalence in our study population (4%), in comparison with the general population (8%). Moreover, obtained results about patients’ insight into their disease showed that a considerable percentage of cases (25%) had no insight to their disease, which indicates the importance of conducting color blindness screening test for medical students due to the importance of color vision in the field of medicine.