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Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India

Background Globally billions of people have vision impairment (VI) or blindness, and at least half of the VI could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. With the policies focused exclusively on treating ailments, we need to recognize the need to educate the country's population regard...

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Autores principales: Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi, Jabeen, Ayesha, Jalily, Quader Ahmed, Begum, Gulam Saidunnisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9744236/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36523686
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.31412
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author Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi
Jabeen, Ayesha
Jalily, Quader Ahmed
Begum, Gulam Saidunnisa
author_facet Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi
Jabeen, Ayesha
Jalily, Quader Ahmed
Begum, Gulam Saidunnisa
author_sort Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi
collection PubMed
description Background Globally billions of people have vision impairment (VI) or blindness, and at least half of the VI could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. With the policies focused exclusively on treating ailments, we need to recognize the need to educate the country's population regarding diseases and their outcomes. This is evident in the poor eye donation rates, as documented by the Eye Bank Association of India (EBAI). The National Programme for Prevention of Blindness (NPCB) also advocates the need for active campaigning to promote eye donations and improve the corneal procurement rate by increasing health awareness. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, awareness, and perception regarding eye diseases and eye donation among the rural population of Telangana, South India. Methods A cross-sectional study involving 150 participants who were randomly selected from non-triaged attendants in the outpatient queue at Mahavir institute of medical sciences (MIMS) was included. Trained enumerators used verbally administered, semi-structured questionnaires on their awareness and knowledge of cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and night blindness. The Chi-square test was applied to determine the statistical significance of the results obtained from the pre-test and post-test. The significance threshold of the p-value was set at <0.05. Results The population studied belonged to a mean age of 34.98 years. The study included 72 (48%) male and 78 (52%) female subjects, and the majority (48.6%) of them belonged to the age range of 21-30 years. More than 85% of subjects belonged to the middle and lower middle class, and the majority (74.7%) were Hindus by religion. Regarding cataracts, 64 (42.7%) did not know, and 86 (57.3%) had varied perceptions. The awareness regarding glaucoma was the least (88.7%) of all common ocular diseases. The study showed a significant association between knowledge of eye diseases and literacy status plus the population's socioeconomic status (p<0.05 ). A significant association was found to exist between willingness to eye donation and the religion of the study population (p<0.05). Conclusion This study identifies that the awareness regarding various ocular diseases was poor. Moreover, the participants had an alarmingly high misconception regarding different aspects of eye donation. Increasing public awareness is essential to minimize eye diseases, improve eye care, and encourage eye donations.
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spelling pubmed-97442362022-12-14 Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi Jabeen, Ayesha Jalily, Quader Ahmed Begum, Gulam Saidunnisa Cureus Ophthalmology Background Globally billions of people have vision impairment (VI) or blindness, and at least half of the VI could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. With the policies focused exclusively on treating ailments, we need to recognize the need to educate the country's population regarding diseases and their outcomes. This is evident in the poor eye donation rates, as documented by the Eye Bank Association of India (EBAI). The National Programme for Prevention of Blindness (NPCB) also advocates the need for active campaigning to promote eye donations and improve the corneal procurement rate by increasing health awareness. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, awareness, and perception regarding eye diseases and eye donation among the rural population of Telangana, South India. Methods A cross-sectional study involving 150 participants who were randomly selected from non-triaged attendants in the outpatient queue at Mahavir institute of medical sciences (MIMS) was included. Trained enumerators used verbally administered, semi-structured questionnaires on their awareness and knowledge of cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and night blindness. The Chi-square test was applied to determine the statistical significance of the results obtained from the pre-test and post-test. The significance threshold of the p-value was set at <0.05. Results The population studied belonged to a mean age of 34.98 years. The study included 72 (48%) male and 78 (52%) female subjects, and the majority (48.6%) of them belonged to the age range of 21-30 years. More than 85% of subjects belonged to the middle and lower middle class, and the majority (74.7%) were Hindus by religion. Regarding cataracts, 64 (42.7%) did not know, and 86 (57.3%) had varied perceptions. The awareness regarding glaucoma was the least (88.7%) of all common ocular diseases. The study showed a significant association between knowledge of eye diseases and literacy status plus the population's socioeconomic status (p<0.05 ). A significant association was found to exist between willingness to eye donation and the religion of the study population (p<0.05). Conclusion This study identifies that the awareness regarding various ocular diseases was poor. Moreover, the participants had an alarmingly high misconception regarding different aspects of eye donation. Increasing public awareness is essential to minimize eye diseases, improve eye care, and encourage eye donations. Cureus 2022-11-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9744236/ /pubmed/36523686 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.31412 Text en Copyright © 2022, Dinesh Eshwar et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ophthalmology
Dinesh Eshwar, Mummareddi
Jabeen, Ayesha
Jalily, Quader Ahmed
Begum, Gulam Saidunnisa
Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title_full Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title_fullStr Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title_short Knowledge, Awareness, and Perception of Common Eye Diseases and Eye Donation Among People Seeking Healthcare in a Tertiary Hospital in Telangana, South India
title_sort knowledge, awareness, and perception of common eye diseases and eye donation among people seeking healthcare in a tertiary hospital in telangana, south india
topic Ophthalmology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9744236/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36523686
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.31412
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