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A study on refractive errors in school children with complaints of headache in a rural tertiary care hospital

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Original Article

Author Details : Debabrata Das, Somedeb Gupta

Volume : 3, Issue : 2, Year : 2017

Article Page : 192-197

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Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate refractive errors among school children with complaints of headache and to compare it with children without headache.
Methods: This is a prospective cross-sectional study of 414 school children with complaints of headache, aged between 12 and 18 years and 414 children of same age group without headache as control group. Headache complaints were measured by a structured questionnaire. All children underwent a comprehensive ophthalmological examination. Both subjective and objective refraction was done for all children. They were classified into three groups according to refractive errors; myopia, hypermetropia and astigmatism.
Results: The study included 252(60.87%) girls and 162(39.13%) boys with headache and 227(54.83%) girls and 187(45.17%) boys without headache as control group. Mean age of the participants was 13.71± 2.21 years in headache group and 14.45±1.96 years in control group. Among 228(55.1%) children in headache group with refractive errors, 28(12.3%) had myopia, 61(26.8%) had hypermetropia and 139(60.9%) had astigmatism. Out of 72(17.39%) children in control group with refractive errors, 48(66.7%) had myopia, 14(19.4%) had hypermetropia and 10(13.9%) had astigmatism. We observed that refractive error is a risk factor for headache among children with odds ratio 5.38 in comparison to control group and difference was statistically significant (p<0.05).
Conclusions: This study enhances our understanding of the relationship of headache and refractive errors to improve opportunities for its treatment and prevention. An ophthalmologist can play a vital role in the control of headache complaints in school children.

Keywords: Astigmatism, Headache, Hypermetropia, Myopia, Refractive errors

How to cite : Das D, Gupta S, A study on refractive errors in school children with complaints of headache in a rural tertiary care hospital. Indian J Clin Exp Ophthalmol 2017;3(2):192-197

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