Survey of Refractive Errors in Secondary School and Refractive Errors Based- School Screening in Vietnam

Abstract

BACKGROUND: School-based visual acuity screening activities calculate the rates of students with possible refractive errors (REs). School staff informs the results of the children’s parents and the need for an in-depth examination to assist students with RE. AIM: The study aimed to identify the prevalence of REs among secondary students and REs based school screening in some provinces in Vietnam. METHODS: There are 4838 secondary students participating in the survey. All of them were screened for visual acuity by trained school staff including teachers and nurses. Then, a sub-sample of 1404 students was randomly selected for examination by ophthalmologists. There is a set of criteria to identify cases of low vision. We compared the school staff’s visual acuity screening results with ophthalmologists’ results to identify the difference in visual screening methods. RESULTS: The proportion of students with untreated eye problems and that of students with an uncorrected refractive error are currently quite high (at, respectively, 18.5% and 24.6%), especially in urban areas in Da Nang and Hai Duong provinces. Two of three children with RE have not received the appropriate correction. The results of visual acuity screenings were conducted by school staff in the target area have a sensitivity of 60.9% and a specificity of 93.8%. CONCLUSIONS: This indicates that efforts toward detecting students with RE need investments to mitigate the current issues in secondary school. The results suggest that school staffs including teachers and nurses need to be trained with better knowledge and skills in performing screening to improve their screening performance.