Prevalence of accommodative insufficiency and accommodative infacility among junior high school students in a Ghanaian town

Abstract

This study sought to determine the prevalence of accommodative dysfunctions among Junior High School students in the Sunyani Municipality in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. All the 204 students who were present in the randomly selected Junior High School on the day of the data collection participated in the study. The eye examinations performed on all participants included visual acuity tests, refraction (objective and subjective), and Ophthalmoscopy. The demographic variables of the participants as well as their medical and ocular history were taken during interviews. Donder’s Push-Up method was employed using the Royal Armed Forces (RAF) rule to determine the Amplitude of Accommodation (AA) of the pupils. The accommodative facility test was performed using the +2.00/-2.00 flipper. Among the 204 participants, 65 (32%) were found to have accommodative insufficiency whilst 54 (26%) had accommodative infacility. Eighty (39%) out of the 204 participants had at least one of the two dysfunctions with 39 (19%) participants having both dysfunctions. Accommodative anomalies were common among the Junior High School students. Since accommodative and vergence functions are necessary for accurate and efficient reception of visual input, it is therefore necessary for these functions to be tested in all basic school children. Effects of accommodative dysfunctions on academic performance need to be studied.