Association between childhood refractive error and parental smoking.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To find out the different aspects of parental smoking on type /severity of refractive errors in their children.

METHODS: It was an institution based study, conducted on 150 patients aged between 2 and 20 years having a refractive error. It included children with at least one smoker parent, and with no associated ocular and systemic pathology. Refractive errors were measured by doing cycloplegic (1%) retinoscopy and subjective refraction on each individual. Results were obtained by asking the patient to fill a structured and questioner Performa.

RESULTS: Majority of children aged between (2-20 years) i.e. 56% were having hypermetropia and 44% were having myopia. In terms of severity of refractive error out of 150 children 64%had mild (0.75-1.50DS) refractive error while 36% had moderate (1.50-3.00DS) refractive error. Duration of father’s smoking had a great impact on childhood refractive error i.e. if father’s smoking duration was 15+ years, 84% children had hypermetropia while 66% had myopia.

CONCLUSION: It is concluded that parental smoking plays a role in refractive development especially hypermetropia in their children aged between(2-15 years).Duration of parental smoking (father only in our study) has more influence on the severity of refractive errors.so, hypermetropia is more common refractive error among tobacco smokers’ children than myopia.