A study of the correlation between smartphone usage and dry eye in medical students at a tertiary care center

Abstract

Background: CVS and dry eye disease due to computers, in general, is well documented, butspecific literature on smartphone usage leading to these conditions is limited. This study aims toestimate the prevalence of dry eye and determine the effect of duration of use on the CVSsymptoms in college-going smartphone users. Aims: (1) To find a correlation between smartphoneusage and dry eye(2)To find the prevalence of dry eye disease in the smartphone using collegestudents (3)To study whether the duration and pattern of smartphone usage has a bearing on theseverity of CVS symptoms. Materials and Methods: 394 medical students using smartphones forover a year and without pre-existing dry eye disease or ocular surface pathology were included. Tearfilm parameters were estimated. The duration of use and smartphone settings were correlated withthe prevalence of dry eye and computer vision syndrome symptoms. Results: The prevalence of dryeye was 20.81%. The average DED score was 1.56±0.234, and 1.35±0.248 respectively in the DEDand non-DED group with a p-value of 0.0001. The most common CVS symptoms were fatigue (54%in DED,44% in non-DED) and heaviness in both groups (60.9% in DED, 45% in non-DED group.).Conclusions: There was a statistically significant increase in the DED symptom score and theprevalence of CVS symptoms with increasing duration of use and daily exposure to smartphones.