A systematic literature review for evaluation of knowledge, attitude, and self-care practice regarding common eye diseases in the healthy general population

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background and purpose: Increasing people’s knowledge and then changing their attitude and practice with the aim of taking care of their eye health are very important. Considering the importance of the mentioned topic, the main goal of this study was to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice about eye diseases in the general population of the world in the form of a systematic literature review. Materials and Methods: This study was a systematic literature review study, and to do it, a systematic search was conducted in internationally available databases including Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar in the time range of 1998 to 2023. Finally, considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study, the results of 18 articles were extracted. Results: The findings showed that in general, people’s level of knowledge about glaucoma was lower compared to other eye diseases, and the level of knowledge of men and women about eye diseases was different. In addition, the results showed that there was significant relationship between age and knowledge of various eye diseases. The results of all evaluated studies showed that people with higher education have more knowledge about eye diseases. Conclusion: Based on this, it can be concluded that as glaucoma is one of the most important causes of blindness worldwide, it is necessary to plan to increase the level of public knowledge to recognize the symptoms and complications of this disease. In addition to that, it is necessary to increase people’s advertisement by ophthalmology centers and eye specialists about the use of glasses and also to encourage people to visit the eye physician regularly.