Frecuencia de ametropías

a descriptive study was conducted with a randomized sample of 9 513 patients selected (19 026 eyes) that presented ametropias and that received attention at the department of refractive surgery in "ramón pando ferrer" cuban institute of ophthalmlogy. ametropias were more frequent among women aged 21-30. the compound myopic astigmatism was the commonest ametropia in the sample, with difference of gender in favor of females. the simple hypermetropic astigmatism was the only ametropia that did not show differences among the age groups. there was a positive lineal correlation between age and the intensity of hypermetropia and myopia in the group of patientes aged 18-39. it was observed a predominance of myopias and mild and moderate hypermetropias. in the spheric ametropias, 36.8 % of eyes had a severity range that exceeded the surgical criteria. no relation was found between the magnitude of the cylinder and the age of the studied cases. the direct, the oblique and the direct oblique astigmatisms showed a higher frequency in the sample, where the right eye prevailed in the direct and indirect type. the direct oblique and the inverse oblique predominated in the left eye. the ansimetropia was uncommon in the sample and reached only 2.1 % of the total of patients with ametropia. it moslty affected the group aged 31-35