A SURVEY ON THE FREQUENCY OF REFRACTIVE ERRORS IN OPHTHALMIC PATIENTS OF URMIA IMAM KHOMEINI HOSPITAL

Vision is an important indicator of health and life quality. The latest estimates of the World Health Organization indicate that there are 161 million visually impaired people worldwide. The most common reason for impaired vision may be refractive error. This research was performed to determine the frequency of refractive error s in ophthalmic patients of Urmia Imam Khomeini Hospital. This cross sectional and descriptive study was performed on 451 patients with refractive error which referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital of Urmia. The samples were selected randomly and the d ata collected by using questioner and the results were analyzed using SPSS software. In this study the frequencies of refractive errors were: Plano 41 eyes (4.5%), Hyperopia 71 eyes (7.9%), Myopia 290 eyes (32.2%), Astigmatism 73 eyes (8.1%) and Mixed 427 eyes (47.3%). Most frequencies in all samples with refractive errors were mixed (268 patients, 59.4%) and the least frequencies in all of samples with refractive errors was Astigmatism (29 patients, 6.4%). There was no significant relationship between the frequencies of refractive errors in men and women (P>0.05). All of refractive errors were within the limits of 0-4 diopter. This research was performed to determine the frequency of refractive errors in low size samples and that is incomparable with other researches that performed to determine the prevalence of refractive errors in high size samples. We suggest the further and future studies to determine the prevalence of refractive errors with high samples size.