Why are we not doing retinoscopy in the school eye screening? Is distant visual acuity a sensitive tool for making referrals?

PURPOSE: School eye screening program is an integrated part of SarvaShikshyaAbhiyan. Distance visual acuity was the only tool used in such school eye screening for making referrals. We aim to evaluate the referral rate when only distance visual acuity was used as the screening tool versus using retinoscopy. METHODS: School children were earlier screened using distant visual acuity as the sole criteria. They were again examined as per the guidelines recommended by State of Alaska and American Academy of Pediatrics, and the results of the two examinations were compared. Microsoft Excel 2007 was used for the statistical analysis. RESULTS: Earlier 384 school children of class first to fourth (aged 6-10 years) had been screened using distant visual acuity. Of them, 87 (22.6%) were referred. The rest 297 (male 183 61.6%) students with a mean age of 7.8 years (standard deviation ± 1.23) were again examined and 42/384 (11%) were detected as having visual anomaly that were false negative/or missed during the initial screening. Refractive errors were detected in 33/42 (78.6%) students by retinoscopy. Retinoscopy showed the highest sensitivity (78.6%) and negative predictive value (96.6%) to detect all types of refractive error among all types of tests. Of 42 pair of eyes, 36 right eyes and 39 left eyes had refractive errors, mostly astigmatic, or hyperopic, which were missed earlier. CONCLUSION: Only distance visual acuity failed to detect hyperopia and astigmatism properly. Introduction of retinoscopy would increase the validity of school eye screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]