Assessment of Knowledge and Practice of Various Eye Diseases in Sulaimani: A Descriptive Study

Knowledge and practice of public, especially patients about eye diseases are important to reduce magnitude of human blindness. Vision and sight are very essential because they allow us to connect to each other’s. In accordance to the recently published data; the estimation of 253 million people lives with vision impairment, 36 million are blind and 217 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at Shahid Dr. Aso Hospital in Sulaimani city-Iraq, from April to August 2017 by face-to-face interview through close ended questionnaire for data collecting. All data were analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22.0 software. P-value of < 0.05 was considered as a statistically significant. A total of 430 patients were randomly chosen to participate in the study. They were 254 (59.1%) males and 176 (40.9%) females. 76.7% of respondents was worrying about vision loss, 0.7% was worrying about hair loss. Of the participants, 32.8% was with a good knowledge level and 40.5% was with a poor knowledge level, as well as 3.1% was in a good practice and 58.8% was in a poor practice level. Female knowledge mean score was 9.53±4.96 and male knowledge mean score was 8.42±5.45, the practice mean score of males was 4.33±1.96 and mean practice score of females was 4.13±1.93. The study data indicate the worrying of participates about vision loss is in the highest proportion and the awareness and practice of patients about eye diseases is unsatisfactory. Health education campaigns are needed to improve personal awareness about vision related problems and for better eye health

Attendance of Patients with ophthalmological problems about Eye Protection from UV/blue Light Radiation from Sun light and Electronic Devices in Sulaimani City

Ultraviolet (UV) and blue light are affecting eyes during the daily time and may cause many eye’s problems and diseases. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the awareness of patients with ophthalmological problems on UV/blue light protection measures and to evaluate their knowledge and protection measures about radiation that emits from sun light and other electronic devices. It comprised a cross-sectional survey on a representative target population with eye diseases who visited the Shahid Aso Eye Hospital at Sulaimani city (sample size = 500). A special designed cross-sectional questionnaire was performed on a random sampling for data collection from 9th September 2017 to 1st January 2018. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 22.0. There was an even distribution between male and female participants across the groups. The highest percentage of patients with light sensitivity was (79.6%) and the lowest percentage with eye injury was (7.8%). Most of participants had knowledge about the effects of UV/blue light on eye diseases by (52%), cataract (57.8%), glaucoma and red eye with percentage of (45.8%) and (43.4%) respectively. There was a significant difference for the males who were more game-player and using electronic devices like smartphone/tablet /iPad than females. There was a significant difference between male and female participants about the knowledge on harmful effects of radiation from electronic devices. Furthermore, only the patients with sun light sensitivity and cataract had a significant knowledge about harmful effects of radiation from electronic devices on human eyes. Finally, most of the patients with dry eyes, eye/lid infection and glaucoma and cataract had significantly more practices for taking visual breaks when using electronic devices. This study concluded that the patients with ophthalmological problems show a low level of knowledge and protection measurements on the harmful effects of UV/blue light on human eyes and radiation protection. Additionally, this study has discovered that sun protection measures are commonly inadequate among the participants and on a regular basis only a small portion of participants were used the sun protection requirements