Prevalence of color blindness in pre-employment screening in a tertiary health care center in Pakistan

Objective: To describe the frequency of color vision deficiency among Pakistani adults presenting for pre-employment health screening in a tertiary care hospital.

Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and the data was collected for color vision deficiency, age, gender, and job applied for from pre-employment examination during 2013-2014. IBM SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis.

Results: Three thousand four hundred and thirty seven persons underwent pre-employment screening during 2013 and 2014; 1837 (53.44%) were males and 1600 (46.65%) females. The mean age was 29.01 (±6.53) years. A total of 0.9% (32/3437) persons had color vision deficiency with male being 1.4% and female 0.4%.

Conclusion: Color vision deficiency was observed in 0.9% of candidates screened for pre-employment health check up in a tertiary care hospital. The color vision deficiency was predominantly present in male individuals.