Common Eye Problems Research Articles

Prevalence of the refractive errors by age and gender: the Mashhad eye study of Iran

Refractive errors are a common eye problem. Considering the low number of population-based studies in Iran in this regard, we decided to determine the prevalence rates of myopia and hyperopia in a population in Mashhad, Iran. Cross-sectional population-based study. Random cluster sampling. Of 4453 selected individuals from the urban population of Mashhad, 70.4% participated. Refractive error was determined using manifest (age > 15 years) and cycloplegic refraction (age ≤ 15 years). Myopia was defined as a spherical equivalent of -0.5 diopter or worse. An spherical equivalent of +0.5 diopter or worse for non-cycloplegic refraction and an spherical equivalent of +2 diopter or worse for cycloplegic refraction was used to define hyperopia. Prevalence of refractive errors. The prevalence of myopia and hyperopia in individuals ≤ 15 years old was 3.64% (95% CI: 2.19-5.09) and 27.4% (95% CI: 23.72-31.09), respectively. The same measurements for subjects > 15 years of age was 22.36% (95% CI: 20.06-24.66) and 34.21% (95% CI: 31.57-36.85), respectively. Myopia was found to increase with age in individuals ≤ 15 years and decrease with age in individuals > 15 years of age. The rate of hyperopia showed a significant increase with age in individuals > 15 years. The prevalence of astigmatism was 25.64% (95% CI: 23.76-27.51). In children and the elderly, hyperopia is the most prevalent refractive error. After hyperopia, astigmatism is also of importance in older ages. Age is the most important demographic factor associated with different types of refractive errors.

Bacteriologic and plasmid analysis of etiologic agents of conjunctivitis in Lagos, Nigeria

BackgroundConjunctivitis, an inflammation of the conjunctiva, is one of the most common eye problems affecting all age groups in Nigeria. A better understanding of its epidemiology and the antibiotic susceptibility of etiologic bacterial agents is crucial for the initiation of preventive and therapeutic measures. This study determined the distribution and patterns of bacterial infections in Nigerian patients with conjunctivitis. Antibiotic resistance patterns and the plasmid profiles of these pathogens were also investigated.MethodologyA total of 83 consecutive and non-duplicate conjunctival specimens were collected from patients attending eye clinics at three different hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria, between February and September 2010. Specimens were cultured on standard bacteriologic media and the recovered isolates speciated using standard techniques. Susceptibility of pathogens to antibiotics and plasmid DNA extraction were carried out by disk diffusion and alkaline lysis methods. Conjugation experiment was done with rifampicin-resistant Escherichia coli DH5α as the recipient cell. Data were analyzed using the chi-square test.ResultsAll the specimens were culture-positive, yielding a total of 155 bacterial isolates. Gram-positive cocci comprising Staphylococcus aureus (27.7%) and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus sp. (22.6%) accounted for 50.3% (78 of 155) of conjunctivitis cases, followed by Gram-positive bacilli (22.6%), Gram-negative bacilli (21.3%), and Gram-negative cocci (4.5%). Corynebacterium spp. were the most commonly isolated Gram-positive bacilli accounting for 16.1% of conjunctivitis cases. Pseudomonas aeruginosa topped with 9.7% as the most commonly isolated Gram-negative bacilli. Other Gram-negative bacilli in order of their isolations were E. coli (6.5%), Proteus sp. (3.2%), Klebsiella sp. (1.9%), and Enterobacter aerogenes (1.9%). Moraxella spp. were the only Gram-negative cocci isolated, and they accounted for 4.5% of the total conjunctival infections. Further analysis of the complexity of infections showed that 25 specimens elicited mono-infections, while cases of polymicrobial infections caused by two pathogens and three or more pathogens constituted 51.8% and 18.1% of conjunctivitis specimens screened, respectively. The disparity in the percentage contribution of three infection patterns was significant (P < 0.05). Antibiotic susceptibility testing revealed chloramphenicol and ofloxacin as the least and most active antibiotics tested as 99 (63.9%) and 149 (96.1%) of the 155 recovered isolates were sensitive to them. On the whole, the least susceptible pathogen was P. aeruginosa with sensitivities ranging from 20% to 80%, while Moraxella sp. represented the most sensitive pathogen with sensitivities ranging from 71.4% to 100%. Other bacterial isolates also elicited antibiotic sensitivities in the range of 33.3–100%. A total of 101 isolates were screened for plasmids, of which 45 harbored plasmids, yielding a plasmid frequency of 44.6%. Conjugal transfer of resistance to chloramphenicol, ampicillin, and streptomycin was detected in the transconjugants after the mating experiment. The antibiotic resistances were transferred either singly or in combination from six of the seven selected donor strains. The antibiotic resistance pattern transferred by these donor strains was partial and was associated with the transfer of R plasmids of sizes 21.3, 15.2, and 5.0 kb from three of the six transferable strains. The frequencies of transfer of antibiotype or R plasmids to the transconjugants ranged from 1.8 × 10−7 to 1.4 × 10−5 transconjugants per donor strain.ConclusionConjunctivitis as an eye problem in Lagos is polymicrobial with infections associated with transferable R plasmids for chloramphenicol, ampicillin, and streptomycin. Continuous surveillance of conjunctivitis in relation to etiology, drug susceptibility, and plasmid transferability in the study area is therefore recommended.

Book Review - Understanding common eye problems

Title of this book quickly suggests the targeted reading community, which is made up of professionals in Eye-care service and the general public. Understandably, there are two identifiable parts of this title, firstly, the understanding of common Eye problems; secondly the guide to the treatment of those common Eye problems. The first part probably is for the benefit of the general public while latter acts both as a clinical guide to the practitioner and as an assurance to the patient that the practitioner has adopted the correct line of treatment for his eye problem. It is important to note this, especially for the practitioner who may think that the title would have more appropriately read “Management of common ocular problems”.

London's children: more than mini adults.

Welcome to this issue of the London Journal of Primary Care, with its focus on children. Children account for nearly 1 in 4 of London's population and despite the city's wealth (ranked as 6th worldwide), Rhys Farthing reminds us that over 40% of London's children live in poverty. The repercussions of this fact on health are part of our professional experience and played out in our day to day contact with children and their families. If the NHS is more than a service to deal with sickness but to promote health and improve health inequalities, what does this mean for us? Although recent government announcements look to press pause on developments such as polyclinics and polysystems, there will be many GPs and other primary care staff, who will continue to see more urgently unwell children than before. Nicky Cootes offers advice and guidance including links to further educational resources on how to prepare for this, and to feel confident in dealing with unwell children. In Claire Gerada's editorial she questions the need for specialist paediatric primary care doctors and the potential harms if we lose the generalist GP role. Meanwhile, Terry Bamford in his editorial argues the case for greater involvement of family doctors in safeguarding in light of the Baby P case here in London. As does Sonia Saxena, who proposes that the absence of GP involvement in caring for urgently unwell children, and changes to the delivery of out of hours care may be explanatory factors in the rising trend in hospital admissions observed among children. In this issue, we have a range of articles that review the management of children across a range of conditions from vitamin D deficiency, common eye problems, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to the ethical maze of consent among children and young people.

Common eye problems among children.

The following article discusses four common paediatric ophthalmology presentations to primary care. A simple approach to assessment of children with these presentations is described.

Edinburgh FOCUS course: foundation course in ophthalmology

Eyes tend to be a mystery to many non-specialists, particularly given the minimal exposure to ophthalmology at medical school. Eye problems are common, however, and a basic knowledge of ophthalmology is useful in many settings. This course aims to give a practical introduction to the assessment and management of common eye problems. The course is aimed primarily at doctors preparing for their first job in ophthalmology, but it is useful for all non-specialists who deal with eye problems on a regular basis. The course I attended had a good mix of accident and emergency doctors, general practice trainees, …

Three common eye problems

Cataract, macular degeneration and dry eye are the three main age-related eye conditions.

Effectiveness of using teachers to screen eyes of school-going children in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh, India

Aim:To assess the effectiveness of teachers in a vision screening program for children in classes 5th to 12th attending school in two blocks of a district of north central India.Materials and Methods:Ophthalmic assistants trained school teachers to measure visual acuity and to identify obvious ocular abnormalities in children. Children with visual acuity worse than 20/30 in any eye and/or any obvious ocular abnormality were referred to an ophthalmic assistant. Ophthalmic assistants also repeated eye examinations on a random sample of children identified as normal (approximately 1%, n=543) by the teachers. Ophthalmic assistants prescribed spectacles to children needing refractive correction and referred children needing further examination to a pediatric ophthalmologist at the base hospital.Results:Five hundred and thirty teachers from 530 schools enrolled 77,778 children in the project and screened 68,833 (88.50%) of enrolled children. Teachers referred 3,822 children (4.91%) with eye defects for further examination by the ophthalmic assistant who confirmed eye defects in 1242 children (1.80% of all screened children). Myopia (n=410, 33.01%), Vitamin A deficiency (n=143, 11.51%) and strabismus (n=134, 10.79%) were the most common eye problems identified by the ophthalmic assistant. Ophthalmic assistants identified 57.97% referrals as false positives and 6.08% children as false negatives from the random sample of normal children. Spectacles were prescribed to 39.47% of children confirmed with eye defects.Conclusions:Primary vision screening by teachers has effectively reduced the workload of ophthalmic assistants. High false positive and false negative rates need to be studied further.

Ocular health status of rural dwellers in south‐western Nigeria

To determine the prevalence and causes of ocular morbidity, visual impairment and blindness, and suggest strategies for blindness prevention in a rural population. A population-based cross-sectional study. Imesi-Ile, in Obokun local government area of Osun State, Nigeria. All participants had preliminary interview and screening consisting of vision assessment using an illiterate E-chart and anterior segment hand light examination at their houses. Those who had signs and symptoms of ocular disease were offered comprehensive eye examination at the base hospital, including visual acuity using illiterate E-chart and refraction, slit-lamp biomicroscopy, gonioscopy, applanation tonometry and dilated fundus examination as necessary. Of the 2201 patients examined, 298 (13.5%) had signs and symptoms of ocular disease. This consisted of 153 male (51.3%) and 145 (48.7%) female patients. Their ages ranged between 8 and 92 years, with a peak age range of 41-70 years (45.6%). Most of them had never seen an eye care specialist for appropriate ophthalmic care. The common eye problems encountered were cataract (48.0%), glaucoma (21.1%), allergic conjunctivitis (16.4%), refractive errors (12.4%), age-related macular degeneration (0.7%) and corneal opacities (0.7%). Thirty-two eyes of 27 persons (1.2%) (22 monocular and 5 binocular) were blind by the World Health Organisation definition. Cataract was the leading cause of blindness (44.4%), followed by glaucoma (33.3%), macular degeneration (7.4%), corneal opacity (7.4%), optic atrophy (3.7%) and phthisis bulbi (3.7%). A significant proportion (13.5%) of people in this community had ocular diseases which require treatment. The role of primary eye care health workers in a rural community as Imesi-Ile cannot be overemphasised.

Causes of Visual Impairment and Common Eye Problems in Northwest American Indians and Alaska Natives

Little information exists regarding the causes of visual impairment and the most common eye problems in American Indians/Alaska Natives. We randomly sampled American Indians/Alaska Natives older than 40 years from 3 tribes within the Northwest region. We found a higher prevalence of visual impairment and normal-tension glaucoma, as well as a lower prevalence of ocular hypertension, in American Indians/Alaska Natives compared with previous results in other racial/ethnic groups. American Indians/Alaska Natives have a need for vision correction. Future interventions in American Indians/Alaska Natives should include providing spectacles for refractive error, detecting glaucoma, and preventing visual impairment from age-related maculopathy and cataracts.

Common Eye Problems In Tropics

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Screening for Eye Disease in Nigeria School Children

The study aimed to establish the validity of simple screening test conducted by readily available non-ophthalmic personnel (such as teachers rather than ophthalmologists who may be regarded as the gold standard) to detect cases of common eye problems in school children. Trained school teachers conducted screening using a simple pen torch eye examination to recognise common eye conditions like red eyes, squint, corneal scar and Bitot's spots. A total of 1585 students from a government owned public primary school (mixed boys and girls) and a private secondary (boys only) school located in Kaduna metropolis were screened by the teachers. The trained schoolteachers were able to attain a sensitivity of 59.1% and specificity of 85.1% for the sample eye examination. After just one day training, the trained schoolteachers were able to achieve reasonably high levels of specificity and modest levels of sensitivity in carrying out simple eye examination. Trained teachers can reduce the workload of ophthalmic personnel by as much as a factor of twenty. They can also play a vital role in promoting ocular health of school children especially in developing countries where there is little or no provision for school health services in schools attended by those from a poor background. Nigerian Journal of Ophthalmology Vol. 9, No.1 (August 2001): pp6-9 KEY WORDS : screening, Eye diseases, school children

Continuing nursing education (CNE) article Detection and treatment of strabismus

Strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes, is one of the most common eye problems in children. Reduced vision in a weaker eye is called amblyopia, occurring in about 50% of children with strabismus. Determining the presence of strabismus can lead to referrals for appropriate treatment. The importance of early detection is stressed, because permanent irreversible vision loss may occur if the condition is not treated by 6 years of age. Methods of detection, common types, and treatment modalities are reviewed. The informed nurse can reiterate instructions and explanations to parents and family members; patient education can enhance treatment and compliance.

Management of Ocular Problems in Older People

This paper reviews some of the more common eye problems of the elderly, and particularly those most likely to cause blindness. A description of each is followed with an outline of available drug treatment. Interactions between treatment for the eye condition and other systemic medication is noted, as is any variation in treatment useful for elderly patients. Most eye treatment regimens do not require modification in the elderly but caution is needed with antiglaucoma medications. Compliance problems may be considerable: surgery may sometimes help. Visual impairment may prevent some elderly managing adequately any medications whether topical or systemic.Aust J Hosp Pharm 1997; 27: 239–42.

Eye examination and vision testing.

This article discusses some of the more common eye problems that nurses may encounter during their day-to-day practice. It describes some of the observations and simple testing that may be used to help determine the need for specialist consultation. A principal aim is to remind nurses that by the use of careful observation and simple examination techniques, they can play an important role in the detection of ocular pathology and the unmet need for specialist services. Manifestations of a variety of disorders are highlighted, together with some of the key points for nurses to consider when examining the external eye and lid.

Strabismus Repair in the Pediatric Patient

Strabismus, one of the most common eye problems in children, is the inability to focus one or both eyes on an object. Strabismus results from poor extraocular muscle coordination. Patients with strabismus undergo surgery to reduce ocular deviation, restore normal vision, cosmetically straighten the eyes, and develop sensory fusion that will maintain motor alignment. Because strabismus is a muscular problem, patients with strabismus are at increased risk for malignant hyperthermia (MH). This risk is an important perioperative consideration. The perioperative nurse must be familiar with the MH protocol and be prepared to treat a child in this emergent situation.

Common eye problems in the older woman.

Dry eye syndrome, cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration are the four most common eye problems affecting elderly women. The cause, symptomatology, treatment, and prognosis of each condition are discussed.

Diagnosis and Management of Strabismus and Amblyopia

Strabismus and amblyopia are among the most common eye problems encountered in children. Proper assessment and management require a knowledge of the various types, methods of detection, and principles of treatment. The role of the pediatrician is emphasized because of the importance of early detection.

Common eye problems. Introduction.

In his introduction, Dr Hodes points out that primary care physicians may be more responsible for counseling patients with eye problems than they realize, even though ophthalmologists may be providing treatment. The symposium articles deal with four of the most common eye problems which physicians encounter in office practice: cataract. glaucoma, migraine related to the eye, and the appropriate use of contact lenses, including the information patients need to know.

Common Eye Problems

Common Eye Problems