What Can You Do to Improve Compliance with Eyeglasses or Spectacle Use?
Discussion
Uncorrected refractive errors (URE) are a major cause of visual impairment and blindness globally. It is estimated that more than 12.8 million children ages 5-15 years have URE.
URE can cause astigmatism, anisometropia, amblyogenic hyperopia and myopia. It can also be a factor in injuries, behavioral problems and academic and social impairments.
Spectacles (or eyeglasses or eye wear) are a low-cost, non-invasive, simple to use treatment for URE. Spectacle use has many benefits but depend on end-user use.
Learning Point
Non-compliance with spectacle use is estimated to be 40.1% overall with a range of 9.8-78.6% in a meta-analysis.
Non-compliance is associated with older children, living in a rural area and in some studies females more than males.
Compliance remains low even if the spectacles are provided at no-cost. Custom-made or ready-made spectacles do not change compliance overall.
Compliance is improved if there is a higher RE (i.e. patient has worse vision therefore child experiences improvement using the spectacles).
Reasons for non-compliance includes:
Breakage/loss/forgetfulness – 23.3%
Broken or lost spectacles
Forgetfulness
Personal factors – 25.8%
Parental and children perceptions
Peer pressure
Patient self-esteem
Injury concerns
Dislike of the spectacles, unattractiveness/poor appearance
Vision problems/headache – 5.5%
Uncomfortable spectacles
Unclear vision
Cost
Non-vision specialists should be aware that patients with low...
Source: PediatricEducation.org - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Pediatric Education Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news
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