Purpose: To asses the prevalence of refractive error in school-aged children. Methods: A total of 735 school-aged children in Jenman province were included. In all participants, visual acuity, auto Ref-Keratometer, and subjective refraction were determined. A spherical equivalent of -0.5 diopter(D) or worse was defined as myopia, +0.5D or more was defined as hyperopia, and a cylinder refraction greater than 0.75D was defined as astigmatism. Myopia was categorized as either low myopia -0.75∼ -2.00D, medium myopia -2.00 to -6.00 D or high myopia -6.00D or greater. Hyperopia was categorized as low hyperopia +0.75D to 2.00D, and medium hyperopia +2.00D or more. Results: The prevalence of presenting, spectacle corrected visual acuity of 0.5 worse eye was 28%, 48.2%. The prevalence rate of myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism were 43.7, 7.6%, 12.1%. The prevalence of myopia was the highest and followed by the prevalence of astigmatism. The prevalence of hyperopia decreased with age. Conclusion: Compared with other reported rates, the prevalence of myopia in the school-aged children of Jennam is similar to that in most places excluding the other countries, and that hyperopia is in the mid range.

• Jung Un Jang(Dept. of Optometry, Eulji University)