Introduction: Presbyopia is an age-related decline in accommodation that diminishes the ability of the eye to focus on near objects. This is due to reduced elasticity of the crystalline lens as age increases. It causes near-vision impairment and affects near work, so it has significant effects on quality of life, particularly in the life of teachers, whose work depends mostly on reading and writing at short distances.
Objective: The overall objective of the study was to assess the prevalence and associated factors of presbyopia among school teachers in Gondar city, Northwest Ethiopia, 2016.
Methods: A cross-sectional study design with multistage simple random sampling technique was used to select 668 teachers in Gondar city. The study was conducted in 12 schools from April 15 to May 15, 2016. A pretested structured questionnaire and ophthalmic instruments for an eye examination were used as data collection tools by trained optometrists. Epi Info version 7 was used for data entry, and the data were exported to Statistical Package for Social Science version 20 for further analysis. Multivariate logistic regression was employed using enter method and odds ratio with 95% confidence interval, and p-value of ≤0.05 was considered to identify statistically significant associated factors of the outcome.
Results: Prevalence of presbyopia among school teachers was 68.7%. Out of the total examined subjects, 317 (50.2%) were females. On multivariate analysis, increased age, salary, work experience, cigarette smoking, pregnancy, and refractive error were positively and significantly associated with presbyopia. On the other hand, use of sunglasses and alcohol consumption were inversely and significantly associated with presbyopia.
Conclusion and recommendation: The study had demonstrated a higher prevalence of presbyopia among school teachers. Further investigation is recommended to assess the effect of alcohol consumption on presbyopia.
Keywords: Ethiopia; Gondar; presbyopia; school teachers.