RESUMEN
Background: Astigmatism may effect schooling among children
Objective: To determine the effect of uncorrected astigmatism on the readiness of child to go to school
Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 61 children and vision screening was performed on these children admitted in nursery and prep class of Government Paisa and Akhbar School Lahore from 1 October to 30 November 2015. A questionnaire was asked from the in-charge of each class. The questions represented the different scales of academic readiness. These questions included physical health, personal and social development, academic performance, reluctance while coming to school, attention, language and literacy. The children with astigmatism [defined as >o.5 or equal to 0.5 in either eye] were compared with children who had no astigmatism. Association between the astigmatism and each scale of academic readiness was measured by applying qualitative chi square test. The effect of age and spherical refractive error was ignored. The data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version 13
Results: A total of 61 students participated in this study. 21 students were of age 4 years and 40 children were of age 5 years. 35 children were non-astigmatic and 25 children were astigmatic. There was no significant effect of uncorrected astigmatism on health and development [P=0.2], reluctance to go to school [p=0.08] and school attendance [p=0.3]. This may be due to the fact that our schools are not that efficient to record theacademic performance across the developing years. There was a significant effect of astigmatism on academic readiness [p=0.02], language and literacy [0.05]
Conclusion: The study showed that there was significant effect of astigmatism on academic readiness, language and literacy whereas there was no significant effect on health and development, reluctance to go to school and school attendance. This study emphasized on the importance of early vision screening in preschoolers so that children can see clearly in early years of their visual development and academic learning