Therapeutic Assessment of Conjunctival Impression Cytology in Vitamin A Deficient Children

This study was carried out to examine vitamin A deficiency using conjunctival impression cytology and to find out the effect of vitamin A supplementation in vitamin A deficient children attending out door patient of Ophthalmology Department, ANMMCH, Gaya. The study comprised of 200 children with complaint of night blindness and ocular changes. Conjunctival impression cytology was performed in all the children with the help of Millipore filter material. Children were given 200000 IU oil miscible vitamin A orally. They received an additional oral dose next day and cytology was repeated after 4 weeks. Maximum number of male (62.93 per cent) and female (65.47 per cent) children showed abnormal cytology at initial stage (0 week) of study. After 4 weeks of supplementation with vitamin A, significant number of children with abnormal cytology reverted to stage 0 and I i.e. normal category. This study showed that conjunctival impression cytology is simple, easy, accurate, low cost, non-invasive and precise with high acceptability method to detect vitamin A deficiency in children.