Determining the health problems of visually impaired students by school screening

Disability is considered as one of the most important and global health priorities at childhood. At school ages, disabled students also need health services as much as healthy children and adolescents. This cross-sectional study was performed in order to determine the health problems of visually impaired students by school screening. The universe of the study was composed of students in a primary school for visually impaired (N:99). Seventy-four students who accepted to participate in our study and were allowed by their parents were taken in sample group. Question form and screening form were used for data collection. The datas were collected between March 2011 and May 2011. Frequency distribution, percentages, mean, standart deviation and chi-square test were used in statistical evaluation. The mean age of the participant students was 10.43±2.9, therefore 58% of the students were below 12, and 48.6% of them were male. In the height and weight evaluation according to age and gender, 90.5% ( ±SD:140.57 ±17.39 cm; min:101, max:176 cm) and 83.8% ( ±SD: 39.89 ±15.39 kg; min:13.4, max:94.6kg) of students were `normal (between 3rd and 97th percentile)?; respectively. According to body mass index, 64.9% of the students were normal. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures were normal in 91.8% ( ±SD:101.85±11.82 mmHg) and 93.2% ( ±SD:61.49±10.8 mmHg) of the students; respectively. According to dmt-f index, 55.4% of the students ( ±SD:3.29±2.29) have good oro-dental health; however 27% of them have risk of hearing loss and 39.2% of them have risk of scoliosis. These results indicate the role of school health nurse in performing comprehensive health screening on disabled students who are a special group in terms of school health services. Screening for height-weight, blood pressure, oro-dental health, hearing and scoliosis on visually disabled children and adolescents is recommended.Key Words: Visually impaired, student, school health, health screening, school health nurse.