A Survey of Congenital Colour Blindness in High School Students of Ahwaz in 2003

Colour blindness is an important hidden problem that may cause secondary compilcations in daily lives of some professions. In addition, due to differences in the prevalence of colour blindness in many populations, as well as its unknown level in our population, the aim of this study was to find out the prevalence rate of this condition in our region.Subjects and Mehtods: In this descriptive study 2500 high school students in Ahwaz (1250 males, 1250 females) were randomly selected. Colour blindness test of Ishihara was performed. 94 students (3.7%) were found to be colour blind (68 males and 26 females). From the total cases identified, 46 cases (49) deutanopia, 14 cases (33%) with deuteranomaly, 6 cases (6.3%) were protanopia and 11 cases (11.7 %) protanomaly. No case with complete colour blindness was found. We suggest checking of colour vision in the school age groups, in order to detect early colour- blindness and hence guide them for more suitable job selection.