Color Vision Deficiency in Medical Students in Jammu & Kashmir, India

Abstract

Non recognition of any of the three colors is known as color blindness. Color blindness is the commonly used term for deficiency of color vision. Word color blindness is a misnomer as anyone labeled as it, is extremely rare to be totally color blind hence more correctly called color vision deficiencies (CVD). Color vision is a function of three types of cone pigments present in retina. The incidence of Color vision deficiency is common in medical profession and affects the diagnosis and treatment of patients but still it remains the most neglected aspect of vision. Color is very important sign used in medical profession, but there is no effective screening for Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) at any level of medical profession. The present study was undertaken to find out CVD in medical students of Government medical college Srinagar.
 Material and Method: A total of 300 medical students (MBBS, BDS, NURSING) including 154 males and 146 females between 18-20 years of age were examined for CVD in Medical College using Ishihara pseudoisochromatic plates. After taking history on structured proforma the students were shown Ishihara’s test plates under day light at normal reading distance.
 Results: Among 154 males, 11 were color deficient (7.14%), and among 146 females, 1 (0.68%) had color vision deficiency. Deutranomalia (41.6%) was the most common type of CVD followed by Protanomalia (25%) then Protanopia (16.7%) and Deutranopia (16.7%), respectively.
 Conclusions: With this high incidence of color vision deficiency, students with CVD may feel difficulty in day-today practice in medical field. So, screening for CVD in medical students at the time of admission is very important which may help in early management of CVD and with timely counseling proper adaptive strategies can be adopted.

Color Blind Prevalence of Elementary Student in Sumbersari Subdistrict, Jember

“…There are prevalence variations in red-green color blindness by population, race, tribe and ethnic (Karolina et al, 2019). The data showed that the number of male color-blind people is more than female color blind so that it can prove that color blindness is a disorder caused by the recessive gene c is linkage on X-chromosome (Nazeer et al, 2019). Males only have one X chromosome so that the color-blind gene will be easily expressed (Moudgil et al, 2016).…”

“…The men allele frequency of color blind was higher than female. Because color blindness is more common in men (Nazeer et al, 2019).…”

Prevalence and awareness levels of color blindness among students of faculty of dentistry and dental prosthesis technology program

“…In common with the findings of the present study, previous studies reported a higher prevalence of color blindness among males. The prevalence of color blindness among males can be attributed to a gene defect in the X chromosome in the Xq28 band ( 13 , 14 ). The relatively low prevalence of color blindness among the males in our study may be due to the low number of males in our study population relative to that of females.…”

Ocular Survey in Kathmandu University Medical Students

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9] In addition to refractive errors, significant number of medical students were found to have color vision deficiency too. [10][11][12] The prevalence of eye defects among medical students seems to be at alarming rate but very few studies have been done to study the gravity of ocular problems as well as assess the factors contributing to visual impairment among medical students in Nepal. This study aimed to provide basic data regarding the ocular problems among the medical students which may aid in pre-assessment of visual function before enrollment in medical school enabling the detection and treatment of any ocular problems that may interfere with academic pursuits.…”