Prevalence of myopia among urban and suburban school children in Tamil Nadu, South India: findings from the Sankara Nethralaya Tamil Nadu Essilor Myopia (STEM) Study

Purpose To report the baseline prevalence of myopia among school children in Tamil Nadu, South India from a prospective cohort study. Methods Children between the ages of 5 and 16 years from 11 schools in two districts of Tamil Nadu underwent vision screening. All children underwent visual acuity assessment using a Pocket Vision Screener followed by non‐cycloplegic open‐field autorefraction (Grand Seiko WAM‐5500). Myopia was defined as a spherical equivalent (SE) refraction of ≤−0.75 D and high myopia was defined as SE ≤ −6.00 D. Distribution of refraction, biometry and factors associated with prevalence of myopia were the outcome measures. Results A total of 14,699 children completed vision screening, with 2% (357) of them having ocular abnormalities other than refractive errors or poor vision despite spectacle correction. The remaining 14,342 children (7557 boys; 52.69%) had a mean age of 10.2 (Standard Deviation [SD] 2.8) years. A total of 2502 had myopia in at least one eye, a prevalence of 17.5% (95% CI: 14.7–20.5%), and 74 (0.5%; 95% CI: 0.3–0.9%) had high myopia. Myopia prevalence increased with age (p