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81
"It has come to be realised that this method has certain
drawbacks, the chief of which is that many cases of defective
vision are not detected by it. Thus certainly many children with
hypermetropia, even high hypermetropia, go uncorrected. Perhaps
this is not very important, but unfortunately it is becoming obvious
that cases of early myopia and myopic astigmatism, and also of
hypermetropic astigmatism, are not submitted for refraction, until,
of course, eventually the acuity of vision becomes so diminished
that attention is called to the need of it. Accurate records are
now available of the condition of refraction of a large group of
unselected children in the Report of the Committee already
mentioned. From this the cases of children of school age have
been extracted and the proportionate distribution of the various
refractive conditions calculated with the following result:—
Number
Per Cent.
Simple Myopia 38 2.4
Emmetropia 90 5.8
Simple Hypermetropia 1,000 64.2
Myopic Astigmatism 12 .8
Hypermetropic Astigmatism 217 13.9
Mixed Astigmatism 19 1.2
Anisometropia 182 11.7
1,558 100.0
"If the percentages thus arrived at are applied to the total
number of school children in Ealing the expected number of children
in each of the seven groups can be arrived at and this can then be
compared with the actual number of cases on the records of the
School Oculist. These records have been carefully scrutinised,
and the results classified after the method used in the report.
Since it is estimated that 10 per cent. of children receive ophthalmic
treatment privately a correction has been applied for this. The
total number of school children in Ealing has been taken as 12,100,
and the expected numbers of the more important abnormal refractive
conditions are seen contrasted with the actual numbers under
observation in the table below :—