Prevalence of myopia among disadvantaged Australian schoolchildren: A 5-year cross-sectional study

Aicun Fu, Kathleen Watt, Barbara M. Junghans, Androniki Delaveris and Fiona Stapleton

PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: Purpose: Myopia prevalence is influenced by environmental factors including heritability and social disadvantage. The current prevalence of myopia among disadvantaged school children in Australia has not been reported. Therefore, this study analyses refractive data for children from rural and outer suburban areas. Methods: The records of 4,365 children aged 6–15 visiting a city-based government-school respite care center during the years 2014/2016/2018 were analyzed for right eye non-cycloplegic spherical equivalent refraction (SER). The prevalence of myopia (SER≤-0.50D) was compared with historical data. Results: The prevalence of myopia was 3.5%, 4.4% and 4.3% in 2014, 2016 and 2018, respectively. The prevalence of myopia increased with age (P 0.05). The overall mean SER was 0.89±0.86D, 0.62±0.89D and 0.56±0.95 in 2014, 2016 and 2018, respectively. Mean SER was associated with year of testing, age (all P

Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0238122 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 38122&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0238122

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238122

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().