THE PREVALENCE OF STRABISMUS IN CHILDREN AT SCHOOL AGE IN SOHAG CITY

Objective: The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence of different types of strabismus inprimary school children; grade one in Sohag city. Background: Strabismus is the most commonamblyogenic factor. Children with untreated strabismus and/or amblyopia will lack the ability to fullydevelop binocular single vision. They may have psychosocial difficulties later in life. Design: A crosssectional study was employed to determine the prevalence of strabismus among primary schoolchildren (grade one) in Sohag city from November 2017 to April 2018. Methods: Visual acuity,autorefraction, Hirschberg's test and cover test using a pen light torch were performed for 584 out of 841students (age range 5.5–7 years). Children with any type of strabismus or had a history of strabismussurgery were subjected to a full ophthalmic examination including slit lamp, extraocular musclesexamination, Worth 4 dots test, and fundus examination. Results: Students with strabismus are 8 of 584students. Four of them are boys and the others are girls. Three of the detected cases are esotropias (twoboys and one girl) with a prevalence of 0.5%. The other five detected cases are distributed as threecases of exophorias (two girls and one boy) with a prevalence of 0.5% and two cases of esophorias (onegirl and one boy) with a prevalence of 0.3%. In the present study, 506 students (255 males and 251females) are emmetropic (< ± 1.00 D) with a percentage of 86.6% and the other 78 students (40 malesand 38 females) are with refractive errors with a percentage of 13.4%. Most of them are with astigmatism(9.3%) then myopia (2.9%) and hypermetropia (1.2%). Conclusion: In this study, the prevalence ofstrabismus in children at school age in Sohag city is 1.4% with no statistically significant association withgender.