Science & Healthcare

Background.Myopia is a high prevalent eye disease in the word and is a common cause of visionloss. Increasing myopiaprevalence among young population, including the students of medical universities, has raises scientific interest for this problem.

The aim of the study is to examine the prevalence of refractive errors among the first year medical students and to compare it with the World indicators.

Methods: A cross-sectional study including 598 students (1195 eyes). All the first year students, excluding the foreign students, have been examined. The statistically significant differences in qualitative variables have been evaluated by the means of Pearson’s Chi- squared test. StatisticalanalysiswasperformedbySPSS 20.0.

Results: 272 (45.5%) students from the all the subjects had refractive errors: myopia in 226 (37.7%) and hypermetropia in 46 (7.6%) (p<0.001).The main part of the examined students were female (p<0.001). Only 187 (68.8%) of examined students with a refractive error used optic corrections. Due to visual apparatus tension, some students have complaints such as fatigability 173 (63.6%) and eye redness 132 (48.5%).

Conclusion: The prevalence of refractive errors, especially of myopia, among the medical students is high. The prevalence of myopia is less than in India, China, Thai, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, but is more than in Turkey and Poland.