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Background: Refractive error (RE) represents a common cause of treatable visual impairment, and studying its epidemiology has been a research interest worldwide. Objectives: To investigate the refractive status of Iraqi patients visiting the eye clinic at Fallujah Teaching Hospital and report the results compared to local and global records. Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study analyzed the saved patients' records from the Fallujah eye clinic. The prevalence of myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism was estimated and analyzed according to gender and age groups in children, adolescents, and adult patients. Results: In children and adolescents under the age of 18 years, the prevalence of emmetropia, myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism was 34.95%, 19.7%, 20.9%, and 24.6%, respectively. In adult subjects, 29.6% were emmetropic, 16.9% were myopic, 20.7% were hyperopic, and 32.8% were astigmatic. A significant association between RE and age was detected (P = 0.001) but not with gender (P = 0.061). Conclusion: This study found a high prevalence of RE among all age groups, with astigmatism being the most prevalent RE, followed by hyperopia and myopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of uncorrected refractive errors among the internally displaced schoolchildren in Iraq. Method: A school-based cross-sectional study in the academic year of 2016-2017. Schoolchildren were selected from 8 primary schools for the internally displaced children in Kurdistan region, Iraq. All children underwent full ophthalmic examination, uncorrected visions were tested and cycloplegic refractions were done for children with visual impairment. Refractive errors in this study were determined by the results of the cycloplegic refraction. Results: From 592 selected children, 94.7% had participated in our study, and 553 were eligible (age ranged from 6 to 12 years). The prevalence of refractive errors was 34.5%; 32.2% of them were uncorrected. The prevalence rates of myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism were 3.8%, 13.9% and 14.9%, respectively. Conclusion: This study has found a high prevalence of uncorrected refractive errors among the internally displaced children in Iraq. This result represents an important health issue among those children, requiring major actions to tackle and resolve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]