Eye disorders occurred in people chronically exposed to low dose radiation as the results of radiological incidents in the Southern Ural

People of several settlements in the Southern Ural have been chronically exposed to radiation caused by contamination of the area and the Techa River with radioactive waste resulted from the Kyshtym disaster and other radiation incidents in Mayak, a nuclear reprocessing plant. The article presents results of the study of eye diseases special features in the residents of the affected territories. Two stages of the follow-up were performed from 1955 to 1965 and dominating eye disorders found in the first follow-up stage were caused by infections and parasites. In 2018 increase in glaucoma cases was observed: the disease was diagnosed in 3.6% of patients, chronically exposed to low dose radiation, in the first stage of follow-up glaucoma was diagnosed in 0.7% of the affected people. The growth, partly, may be caused by ageing of the population. Among chronically exposed population the cataract was the frequently diagnosed disease, senile and presenile forms were the most common among the older people. In both follow-up studies opacity in the cortical layers was the most common type of the lens change (54-63% of all types of the changes).