PREFERENCE FOR LOW
VISION AIDS IN A NIGERIAN TEACHING HOSPITAL
Eze CC (MBBS,
FWACS, FMCOph).
Department Of
Ophthalmology,
Enugu State
University Teaching Hospital, Enugu. Nigeria
Correspondence to:
Dr. Eze CC.
E-mail: emmy_queen2002@yahoo.com
Citation: Eze
CC. Preference For Low Vision Aids In A
Nigerian Teaching Hospital.
Orient
Journal of Surgical Sciences. March 2020; 1 (1): 20 – 24
ABSTRACT
Purpose:
To determine the proportion of patients who would benefit from low vision aids
and their preferences for these devices in the eye clinic of University
of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Ituku-Ozalla, Nigeria
Methods:
This
was a prospective cross-sectional study of all new consecutive low vision
patients seen at the hospital within the study duration of 12 months. All
patients with low vision were evaluated by the researcher and the findings
entered on a research protocol. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics
to generate frequency and percentage distributions. Analytical statistics was
employed to test for significance of observed inter-group differences.
Statistical significance was indicated by p < 0.05.
Results:
A
total of 197 patients were seen comprising of 120 males and 77 females (M: F =
1.6:1), mean age was 39.3 ± 22.9 SD years. From the study, 114 (57.9%) of the
patients would benefit from optical low vision aids while 83 (42.1%) would
benefit from non-optical low vision devices. In the group that had improvement
with optical aids, 38.2 % required only telescopes, 14.5% benefited from
magnifiers alone, and 32.8% required both telescopes and magnifiers. The
remainder, 14.5%, required both optical and non optical devices like
face caps, antiglare glasses, and table lamps. Majority of
patients who preferred magnifiers wanted either spectacle borne (41.4%) or
handheld (39.0%). Most of the patients who chose telescopes wanted spectacle
borne (71.4%).
Conclusion:
Majority of patients in this survey preferred either spectacle borne magnifiers
or telescopes.
Keywords: Low
vision, Preference, Nigeria
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INTRODUCTION
Over
285 million people world-wide are visually impaired of whom 39 million are
blind and 246 million have low vision. 1 In Africa, 20.4 million
people have low vision 1. About 90.0% of the world visually impaired
live in developing countries.1 This places a lot of burden on
developing countries including Sub-Saharan Africa due to limited resources.
Low
vision is a major cause of morbidity and has profound effects on quality of
life. It inhibits mobility and reduces the economic well-being of the individuals
affected as well as their families.2 Low vision services have
suffered from neglect in organized eye care especially in low-income countries.2
In
the African continent, which is mainly a low income continent, the burden of
low vision is high for those affected.1 Based on figures from the
Nigeria National Blindness and Visual impairment survey, it is estimated that
approximately 800,000 individuals have functional low vision in this country3
Functionally, low
vision is characterized by irreversible visual loss and a reduced ability to
perform many daily activities.4 It is an important public health
problem.5 The provision of low vision services is one of the
priorities in the global initiative tagged VISION 2020-The Right to the global
initiative tagged VISION 2020-The Right to
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Sight, 6 a programme that is aimed at achieving
Universal eye health which is a global action plan (GAP) 2014-2019.7
There are approximately 5000 adults/million populations in Nigeria who require
low vision aids.3 The challenge of providing low vision service for
such a large population is enormous and requires efficient use of available
resources.8 Studies across the globe have shown that patients with
low vision can benefit from low vision aid which will lead to improved quality
of life for the individuals. Unfortunately, low vision aids are not accessible
to those that need it most, especially in Africa where approximately half the
countries do not have low vision services.9
A
hospital based study to evaluate prescribed optical device use found that
magnifiers were reported to be useful by greater than 80% of the participants.10
The researchers drew a conclusion that patients with low vision who were
provided with prescribed optical low vision devices do use them and perceive
them as beneficial.10
In special schools for the visually impaired
in Ghana, some of students with low vision showed an improvement in both
distance and near visual acuity.11 A study in Evangelical Church of
West Africa (ECWA) low vision clinic in Kano demonstrated that 88.3% of the
patients seen were advised to continue with their education and employment after
they were provided with low vision services. These patients may have either
dropped out of school or gone into premature retirement.12
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