The Prevalence of Accommodative Insufficiency among Students of an Iranian Medical School

To evaluate the prevalence of accommodative insufficiency in a student population from Iran.Patients and

This cross-sectional study was performed on 596 eyes from 298 participants (157 males, 141 females) in age range of 18 to 29 years among students from Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, between 2014 and 2015. The amplitude of accommodation among volunteers in this study was evaluated using the Donder's push up method. Then, the minimum normal amplitude of accommodation for a given age was estimated by Hofstetter formula (15 - 0.25 * age in years), and then the prevalence of accommodative insufficiency among the study population was determined according to this calculations.

We found the prevalence of accommodative insufficiency to be 7.2% in the study population. The prevalence of accommodative insufficiency was 4.1% and 7.25% among males and females respectively (P < 0.001).

The prevalence of accommodative insufficiency in our study population was less than previous studies among children, which might be explained by the role of natural selection (people with accommodative disorders might have less chance of excelling in education and entering higher education institutes than patients without this disorder). We also found a statistically significant higher prevalence of accommodative insufficiency among female college aged students compared to male students.