Publication:

Evaluation of impact of computer usage on various tear parameters in normal healthy tertiary hospital based population in Uttarakhand, India

Background Computers have become an integral part of routine day to day life. Increased usage of computers lead to dry eye due to reductions in the blink rate and its amplitude. The purpose of the study was to analyse changes in the lower tear meniscus by optical coherence tomography (OCT) and to correlate them with other subjective tear parameters.

Methods In this study 203 normal healthy subjects of age below 40 years with refractive errors were enrolled in this  random prospective cross-sectional study. The subjects with computer usage for three hours or more in a day were considered as computer users and rest as nonusers. All subjects underwent routine ophthalmological examination along with dry eye work up. Fourier domain -OCT system (RT-Vue software version 4.7; Optovue, Inc., Fremont, CA) was used to measure lower tear meniscus height (TMH) and tear meniscus area (TMA) in all subjects.

Results Males and females were 116 (57.14%) and 87 (42.85%) respectively with mean age of 34.38 years. Out of 203, 84(41.37% ) were computer users and 119 (58.62% ) were computer non-users. The mean ±SD of Schirmer’s in computer users and non-users were 21.64±5.68mm and 20.03±4.97mm respectively and the difference was  non-signicant (p=0.07). The mean±SD value of tear film break up time (TBUT), slit lamp based TMH and OCT based TMH in computer users were 10.87±1.59 sec, 582.14±176.41mm and 236.49±91.00µm which were having statistically significant differences (p=0.005, 0.001 and 0.024) respectively as compared to computer non-users.

Conclusions TBUT, OCT based TMH and TMA are significantly influenced by computer usage in normal healthy individuals.