| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2015 | Volume
: 3
| Issue : 1 | Page : 9-13 |
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Epidemiological study of patients availing free cataract services of national programme of control of blindness
Mita V Joshi
Department of Ophthalmology, Sri Aurobindo Medical College and Postgraduate Institute, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India
Correspondence Address:
Mita V Joshi
Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, Sri Aurobindo Medical College and Postgraduate Institute, Indore - 453 555, Madhya Pradesh
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2320-3897.149341
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Purpose: To find the proportion of patients who are blind or have low vision prior to undergoing free cataract surgery at a tertiary referral center, selected from free eye camps. To evaluate which patient groups are more in need of free cataract surgery, a series of consecutive cases of cataract that attended free eye camps and were operated during three years, 2008-2010, were evaluated. Materials and Methods: Using computerized assessment systems, we congregated data on pre-operative visual status, diagnosis, condition of other eye, age, gender, caste, and locality for 2507 patients. Visual status was defined as per World Health Organisation (WHO) classification. Results: A total of 2507 (15.06%) operations were performed out of 16,637 cases who attended eye camps, 63.3% were blind (V.A.<3/60) patients, 19.2% were with low vision (V.A. <6/60). Five hundred and seventy-eight (23.1%) patients were between 60-64 years of age followed by 491 (19.6%) in 70-74 years of age, and 456 (18.2%) in 65-69 years of age group. About 74.9% operations were performed on patients above 60 years of age. Females outnumbered males in ratio 1.3: 1.0 and operated cases of backward caste were 86.59% in comparison to general population (13.4%). Conclusion: The demand for free surgery amongst blind patients is still high for underprivileged urban as well as rural population. Backward caste, females, and citizens of age groups 71-80 and 81-90 are most in need of services of cataract programs because of lack of awareness and affordability. |
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