Purpose: To report the prevalence of refractive errors in a rural south Indian population.
Methods: Four thousand eight hundred subjects (age, >39 years) from rural south India were enumerated for a population-based study. All participants underwent complete ophthalmic evaluation. Subjects who were phakic in the right eye with best corrected visual acuity of 20/40 or better were included for analysis. Association of refractive errors with age, sex, cataract, and diabetes mellitus were analyzed.
Results: Of the 3924 responders, 2508 were eligible. The unadjusted prevalence of emmetropia (spherical equivalent [SE], -0.50 to +0.50 diopter sphere [DS]), myopia (SE < -0.50 DS), high myopia (SE < -5.00 DS), and hyperopia (SE > 0.50 DS) were 50.60%, 26.99%, 3.71%, and 18.70% and age and gender adjusted for the rural Tamil Nadu population were 46.77%, 30.97%, 4.32%, and 17.94%, respectively. The prevalence of emmetropia decreased significantly with age (P < 0.0001), and the prevalence of myopia and high myopia increased significantly with age (P < 0.001) and were significantly associated with nuclear sclerosis (P < 0.001). The prevalence of hyperopia increased until 60 years of age and then decreased. Hyperopia was more common among women than men (P < 0.001) and was negatively associated with nuclear sclerosis (P < 0.001) and positively with diabetes mellitus (P = 0.008). Of the participants with astigmatism (cylindrical error greater than 0.50 DC), 9.80% had with-the-rule (WTR) and 77.44% against-the-rule (ATR) astigmatism. The prevalence of WTR and ATR astigmatism significantly decreased (P < 0.001) and increased (P = 0.006) with age, respectively.
Conclusions: The pattern of refractive errors in this rural south Indian population is similar to those reported in other tropical regions of the world.