CAUSES OF BLINDNESS IN A TERTIARY REGIONAL EYE CARE CENTER IN SOUTH INDIA

Blindness and visual impairment is an important public health problem worldwide.The numbers of blind people in India are 12 million, with the estimated increase to 15 million expected by 2020. 1 This is a retrospective study done to enumerate the causes of blindness among people attending a regional tertiary care center for visual disability certificate program over a period of one year.Most common cause of blindness was phthisis bulbi and is also the most common cause of unilateral loss of vision.The second most common cause is leucoma.Most of the studies done till date found cataract as the most common cause of blindness in India.In this study most of the avoidable causes such as cataract and refractive errors were not noted but there were a high number of cases of visual impairment due to leucoma accounting for 20.91% of cases, most of them due to trauma indicating the need for educating primary care providers regarding the early identification and treatment of ocular injuries and prompt referral to an ophthalmologist in the rural areas.