We compared 1,166 eyes with retinal detachment to 11,671 eyes of patients without retinal detachment in order to clarify the distribution of refraction ranges and the relative frequency in incidence of retinal detachment for each range. In the retinal detachment group, hyperopia was detected in 8.58%, emmetropia in 9.26% and myopia in 82.16%, and the corresponding ratios in the control group were 24.29%, 41.30% and 34.41%, respectively. The retinal detachment group thus exhibited a high frequency of myopia, as has been known. The relative frequency of retinal detachment for each range of refraction was 0.35 for hyperopia, 0.22 for emmetropia and 0.83 for myopia in the range -0.75 to -2.75 D. The relative frequency increased with an increase of severity in myopia up to the range of higher than -15.0 D, where the frequency was 68.6 times higher than for the hyperopic range.