Penyebab Masalah Penglihatan di Kalangan Kanak-kanakPrasekolah di Daerah Sitiawan, Perak, Malaysia(Causes of Visual Impairment Among Pre-School Childrenin Sitiawan District, Perak, Malaysia)

Visual impairment can seriouly impact on a child’s social and mental development. Therefore, early detection is important to ensure a better prognosis for them. The purpose of this study was to identify the cause of visual impairment among pre-school children. 479 kindergarten children aged 4-6 ± 0.69 years old (mean=5.3 years) in Sitiawan, Perak, Malaysia were randomly selected. They underwent visual acuity test, cover test, Hirschberg test, ocular external assessment and ophthalmoscopy. Children who failed the vision screening were referred for further assessment. 52% of the children wereboys and the rest were girls. Malays represented the largest group (59.9%), followed by Chinese (30.1%), Indian (9.6%) and others (0.4%). Of those 43 children who failed the vision screening, 32 were confirmed having visual problem (6.7% of the total subjects). The main cause of visual impairment in this study population was refractive error (4.8% of the total subjects) followed by amblyopia (1.0%), strabismus (1.0%) and ocular abnormalities (0.8%). Hence, pre-school vision screening is very important and needs to be conducted as it can detect various visual problems at an early stage in pre-school children.