Sociological research on the population awareness regarding ophthalmological care in ukraine.

INTRODUCTION: nowadays, there are about 45 million blind individuals and, according to the prognosis, their quantity will reach over 76 million in 2020. In such a way, nowadays ophthalmological problems become more widespread, and the market of the ophthalmological services is not studied enough to understand all the tendencies and processes.

AIM: was to study the patients' awareness on eye diseases and choice peculiarities of the information sources and medical institutions among various population age groups of Lutsk, Rivne and Ternopil cities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: the research was conducted as an anonymous questionnaire survey of respondents according to a specially designed integrated protocol by means of interviewing people at the streets of Lutsk (n=2000), Rivne (n=1500) and Ternopil (n=1500) cities.

RESULTS: there was conducted a research on the population awareness concerning vision problems, analysis of social factors and peculiarities of the choice of information sources about eye diseases and factors influencing the choice of a medical institution and an ophthalmologist. It was determined that younger population prefers private medical institutions in almost half of the cases (95% confidence interval (CI) of the private institution choice probability: 0,48-0,52), while older population prefers mainly state ones (95% CI of the choice probability: 0,71-0,74).

CONCLUSION: it was determined depending on the age, the range of people having vision problems varied from 22% in the "under 30 years" population group up to 76% in the "over 60 years" group, although at least 21,5% of the whole population realizing their problems do not address an ophthalmologist.