Up to date, it has generally been accepted that there is some relationship between environment and occurence of myopia in primary school children. The prevention of the primary :school myopia would be urgent to be resolved.
Therefore we tried to find out the causative factors responsible for a primary-school myopia in terms of their environmental factors.
Visual acuity and refractive state of eyes were tested from a total of 1991 primary school children, 1190 from urban area and 801 from rural area.
According to the visual acuity, children were divided into 2 groups, normal group and subnormal group. Normal group defined that visual acuity of both eyes were over 20/39 and subnormal group, blow 20/30.
The two groups were evaluated statistically in terms of various environmental factors. Data were obtained from 11 questionairs of protocol type answered by their parents.
They are gestational period of the evaluated children, visual acuity of their parents, order among siblings, unbalanced diet, possession of TV set or not, brightness of the room when watching the TV, location of TV set, distance between TV set and the observer, duration of watching TV set, reading distance and kind of illumination lamp on reading.
The results are obtained as follows.:
1. Among 1991 primary school children, normal group were 1731 (86.91,b), and subnormal group were 260(13.1%).
2. As to the distribution of refractive error, myopic eyes were observed in 65.2% and hyperopic eyes, 27.2%.
3. The gestational period of the evaluated children and location of TV set seem to be not responsible for the primary school myopia.
4. The remaining factors seem to be responsible for the primary school myopia.
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