Incidence of Dry Eye in the Students who are Active Electronic Users

Introduction: Visual display terminal (VDT) use is increasingly common not only in VDT workers but also in the general population due to the widespread use of mobile devices and smart phones. Smartphone use has significant impact on daily life activity. Smartphones enable varied activities including browsing the web, watching video, group chatting, and social networking as compared to those in the previous generation. Therefore, time spent viewing at display screens has increased with the use of smartphone use than ordinary cellular phone. Previous studies reported that ordinary cellular phones affect human health as well as daily life. With the increasing use of smartphones, recent studies have reported an association between ocular health and smartphone use. Excessive use of smartphone also led to acute acquired comitant esotropia in adolescents. Excessive use of smartphones may affect the tear film and the ocular surface. Office workers who spent more than 4 h watching VDT experienced severe ocular symptoms, similarly, excessive smartphone use has been associated with multiple ocular symptoms. Blue light emitted from the smartphone screen had adverse effect on the corneal epithelial cells in humans. Overexposure to blue light caused deterioration of the tear film and increased levels of inflammatory markers Aim: To determine the incidence of dry eyes in students visiting SMCH ophthalmology OPD Materials and methodology:. Schirmers test was first performed on students to evaluate the degree of dry eyes and the value was recorded. The results were interpreted based on the following values and the degree of severity that is, Normal (greater than15mm), Mild (14-9mm), Moderate (8-4mm), Severe (