The attitude towards strabismus and barriers for its treatment in parents from rural and urban areas

It has been observed that children having strabismus who are being left untreated face a lot of psychosocial and functional difficulties in adulthood. In this study, an attitude and a barrier scale was structured and validated on the basis of the adult strabismus 20 questionnaire and a Barrier Scale. The attitude scale had two subscales-psychosocial subscale and functional subscale. A total of 1747 children; 828 from urban and 919 from rural areas, between the age group of 5 to 12 years were screened from urban and rural schools for strabismus. 36 children with strabismus were identified and studied on the basis of various parameters. None of these children had taken previous treatment for strabismus. The ratio of urban is to rural school children was 5:7 and the ratio between male and female was 7:5. 25 (69.4%) had exotropia, 11(30.6%) had esotropia among which 18(50%) had moderate degree of squint, 12(33.3%) had mild degree of squint. Mean Scores in the psychosocial subscale scale in Urban and rural areas were as 65.89±31.19 and 59.56±26.74 with p value 0.51. Mean Scores in Functional Subscale were as 77.63±32.58 and 66.67±31.66 with p value of 0.31. The most important barrier for treatment was the unawareness of the treatment of strabismus at the appropriate time. The attitude of parents towards strabismus was based on an amalgamation of multiple variables like age of the child, amount of squint, type of squint and also the gender of the child. Keywords: Attitude, Barriers, Early treatment, Refractive error, Strabismus, Stigma.