Incidencia de uso de lentes correctivas en estudiantes del primer año posingreso a la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad Nacional de Asunción

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the variations and usages of corrective lenses by pre-entry students of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of Asuncion, year 2023.
Materials and methods: The research focuses solely on first-year students of the Faculty of Medical Sciences based on descriptive, observational and cross-sectional study. A total of 110 university students’ data were collected about the incidences of corrective lenses through Google Forms surveys shared via Whatsapp.
Results: Of the total population surveyed (n= 110), 50.9 % reported a study time of 5-6 hours per day, 84.5 % said they had close relatives with eye conditions and about 67.3 % said they used corrective lenses. The use of corrective lenses was due to ocular conditions in which myopia predominated in 79.2 %, where most of them already suffered from it before entering the faculty (76 %) but had to increase their prescription during the process (67.1 % of the total).
Conclusions: It was possible to determine among the most frequent vision problems in first myopia, followed by astigmatism and hyperopia. These pathologies influenced the prevalence of the use of corrective lenses in a large number of cases. The preparation process for entering a medical career caused changes in lens prescription, due to the various study methods and the hours dedicated to it, resulting in an average of 5-6 hours of daily study. Many of the respondents already used corrective lenses before entering the faculty; this may be due to family history that already had a clinical history of these pathologies.