Pattern of Refractive Errors in a Tertiary Hospital in South East, Nigeria

Background: Uncorrected refractive errors (RE) are a major cause of visual impairment. They affect a large proportion of the population globally and have psychological and socio-economic effects on the individual, family and society. They could lead to poor quality of life. Aim: To determine the pattern and predisposing factors of refractive errors among patients seen in the outpatient clinic. Methodology: A cross-sectional, descriptive study involving patients with refractive error that presented to the eye clinic in the year 2017. Data were obtained from patients’ records, entered into and analysed using IBM SPSS version 25. Results: A total of 300 patients with refractive errors were seen in the period of study. This comprised of 93 males and 207 females with mean age of 40.13±17.6 years. The commonest presenting complaint was blurring of both far & near vision (24%), other presenting complaints in decreasing order of frequency were blurring of distant vision, itching, blurring of near vision, eye pain, headache and red eyes in 18%,15%, 9.6%, 5.6%, and 3.2% respectively. Presbyopia was noted in 55.3% while myopia, anisometropia, astigmatism and hypermetropia were noted in 20.7%, 19.3%, 7.0% and 1.3% respectively. Nuclear sclerosis was the commonest co-existing ocular pathology or morbidity. Statistically significant association was found between age of the patients and presence of ocular disease existing with RE (p=0.016). Conclusion: Fifty-one percent of the study population had refractive errors. The commonest refractive error was myopia while hypermetropia was the least common refractive error in this environment.