Colour vision deficiency: Is it a handicap? A narrative review of its impact on medical & dental education and practice

Abstract

Colour vision is required in medical and dental practices. This article seeks to present the impact of colour vision deficiency (CVD) on medical, dental education and practices using narrative review of literature. Relevant English publications, comprising of experimental and observational studies, topic and systemic reviews, meta-analyses and randomised controlled trials, were searched and identified from PubMed, National University of Singapore (NUS) database, Cochrane electronic databases and Proceedings of the thirteenth Symposium of the International Research Group on CVD. "Google" and "Google Scholar" were used to search for paramedical literature. Seventy articles were retrieved, of which 38 were included in this review. It shows that CVD affects broad spectrum of medical, dental education and practices, and varies in its impact. Detecting colour cues in clinical practice constitutes one of the many complex processes in establishing the clinical diagnoses, thus the deficiency alone may not handicap the clinicians. Nonetheless, early colour vision screening for medical and dental students, and practitioners would result in early recognition of their limitations and allow time for devising coping strategies.