relationship between refractive errors and ocular biometry components in carpet weavers

purpose : to determine the relationship between refractive errors and ocular components values in carpet weavers methods : refractive errors and ocular components values were investigated on carpet weavers at mashhad city in iran . after selection of samples, the individuals who had ophthalmic and systemic disease effective on the refractive errors were excluded from the study. refractive errors and ocular components were measured by autorefractometry, a-scan ultrasonography and, keratometery, respectively. results : 269 carpet weavers including 191 male (71.9%) and 78 female cases (28.1%) with the mean age of 41.30±6.5 years and range of 21 to 60 years were investigated in this study. the average of spherical equivalent (se) refraction of the subjects was -1.7±1.8 diopters (d). se has a significant relation to axial length (al) (r=-0.564), anterior chamber depth (acd) (r=-0.301), vitreous chamber depth (vcd) (r=-0.557), lens thickness (lt) (r=0.170), and corneal curvature ( cr ) (r=0.170). al and vcd had the most relationship to myopia. the average values of the al, acd, vcd, and lt of the subjects were 23.6, 3.2, 16.6 and 3.9 millimeters respectively. the average of cr was 7.6 millimeters . except lt, other optical components were significantly different in both genders. acd, vcd, and cr had an inverse relation to age and lt had a direct relation to age. conclusion : se refraction in carpet weavers had a significant relation to the ocular components and variation in se refraction may be due to the changes of these elements.    iranian journal of ophthalmology 201022(2):45-54 © 2010 by the iranian society of ophthalmology