Abstract
Purpose :
To describe the epidemiological aspects of an ophthalmological assistance project that provided eye care assistance for nearly five thousand patients in Brazil's countryside.
Methods :
We conducted a ten-day outreach project for vision screening and ophthalmological assistance at the city of Barretos in São Paulo province, between September 24th and October 2, 2018. Two non-governmental organizations, Renovatio (Brazilian) and OneSight (international) coworked in association with the municipal public health system. There was a total of 94 volunteers: 34 OneSight volunteers, 12 Renovatio volunteers, 30 medical students, and 18 ophthalmologists. Patients were enrolled from the public health system waiting list. Demographics data included: sex, age, ethnicity, employment, family income, number of people living at the house, internet access, date of the last visit to the ophthalmologist, previous use of eyeglasses and systemic diseases. Eye exam consisted of uncorrected visual acuity, refraction, slit lamp biomicroscopy, fundus biomicroscopy, and tonometry in selected cases. Those in need received costless eyeglasses or sunglasses according to the prescription. If any eye disease was diagnosed, proper treatment was provided.
Results :
A total of 4,946 patients were examined, from which 2,619 (52.94%) were female, 1,417 were male (28.64%) and 910 (18.42%) patients did not answer. The median age of all patients was: 41.1 years old ± 21.2 years (range 6 to 100 years old). As of skin color, 1,828 patients declared to be white, 1,473 brown, 620 black and 14 Brazilian indian; 1,011 patients did not answer. For employment: 2,352 were unemployed, 1,544 were employed and 1,081 did not answer. 2,367 patients had internet access, 1,422 did not, and 1,157 did not answer. Last visit to the ophthalmologist was over a year for 4,429 (89.5%). After the ophthalmological examination, 3,808 patients had refractive error in need for eyeglasses prescription(77%). From all patients, 732 (14.78%) were diagnosed with a pathology that needed medical referral (Graph 1).
Conclusions :
The study demonstrated an important demand for ophthalmological assistance with a high prevalence of uncorrected refractive errors, which can be solved with simple intervention.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.