Blindness, loss of eyesight, could be temporary or permanent. Damage to any portion of the eye, optic nerve or the brain that is responsible for this function results in visual impairment. The commonest causes for blindness are cataract, refractive errors, glaucoma, corneal opacities. Assess major causes of visual impairment among new patients visiting ophthalmology OPD. : Study conducted using a cross sectional survey design. Data collected from ophthalmology OPD of a tertiary care hospital.The proportion of ocular diseases, degree of blindness and causative factors were assessed and recorded. Patient’s visual impairment status was classified as mild, moderate, severe and blind according to WHO classification for visual impairment and blindness (Oct. 2019). Visual acuity, auto refraction, colour vision, intra ocular pressure measurement, slit lamp and fundus examinations were carried out. Data Entry: MS Excel. Statistics: chi square, proportions. There were 303 participants, 42.2% males and 57.8% females and 0.3% were blind, 1% severely visually impaired, 3.3% moderately impaired, 4% mildly impaired. Among the 106 diabetic patients, 30 diabetic retinopathy cases were observed. There were 1.02% participants with impaired colour vision, refractive errors 54.8%, cataract 35.4%, diabetic retinopathy 9.9%, glaucoma 9.2%. Refractive error and cataract were most frequent. Color blindness was less common. Cataract and glaucoma was not observed before 40 years of age. Visual impairment across regions are similar, refractive error and cataract were leading causes of visual impairment.

Purpose: To introduce a simple and inexpensive method using a fundus contact lens and a reticle, to measure retinal lesions comparing it with values obtained with high-definition optical coherence tomography (HD-OCT). This study considers optic disc as the object for comparison. Methods: Patients underwent routine ophthalmologic examination and their horizontal optic disc diameter was measured, both with the reticle and OCT. For measurement with reticle a simple equation was deduced, x = 0.7y, where x corresponds to the actual image size and y to the reticle scale reading in millimeters. Results: An aggregate of 127 eyes of 75 patients were dilated and examined. The calculated mean diameter according to OCT was 1.639 mm (standard deviation = 0.179) and that assenting to reticle was 1.713 mm (standard deviation = 0.175), with a difference in mean being 0.089 mm. Conclusion: Values obtained by this new method was found to be comparable with the OCT values for retinal measurements, useful for ophthalmologists who cannot afford expensive and sophisticated machines.