Prevalence of strabismus and the outcomes of its management among children attending Ruharo Eye Center, South Western Uganda

Abstract

Background: Strabismus consists of any deviation of binocular alignment and is present in 2 to 4% of the world’s child population. Strabismus can be both the cause and the effect of poor binocularity. When it appears in the early years of life, strabismus may lead to states of sensorial adaptation such  as retinoic correspondence anomaly and amblyopia given that binocular single vision has a critical role in maintaining alignment. On the other hand, if strabismus arises after binocular vision development, diplopia and image confusion appear, which persist indefinitely or until motor alteration is corrected.
Aim: To determine prevalence of strabismus and outcomes of its management among children attending Ruharo Eye Center, South western, Uganda from January 2014 to December 2015.
Methods: In this retrospective descriptive study, medical records of all strabismus patients aged below 16 years seen at Ruharo Eye Center, South western, Uganda from January 2014 to December 2015, were reviewed. Information was collected on demographic characteristics, refractive errors, types of strabismus, management and outcomes.
Results: A total of 8,665 children were seen at REC during the period from January 2014 to December 2015. Of these, 125 children had strabismus thus a prevalence of 1.4%. There were 56 males (44%) and 69 females (55%) with mean age of 14 years, from 4 months to 15 years. Twenty nine children (23.2%) had amblyopia and eighty six children (68.8%) had refractive errors of more than 0.5 diopter. Patients with hypermetropia were 45 (36.0%), myopia 38 (30.4%) and astigmatism 3(2.4%). Esotropia accounted for 80% and exotropia 20% and both were the common types. In our study, the management of strabismus cases included: glasses (30), eye patching (30) and surgery (34). Of the 34 patients operated, post-operative alignment was achieved in 25 cases (73.53%) and under
correction occurring in 17.65%.
Conclusion: The prevalence of paediatric strabismus at Ruharo Eye Center was 1.4%. The most common type of paediatric strabismus in this study was esotropia. The surgical success rate was generally good.