Purpose:
It is known that individuals with no dry eye diagnosiscan experience dry eye symptoms in adverse conditions such asarid, windy environments, or while performing visual tasks suchas reading or watching television. The purpose of this studywas to evaluate the effect of daily environmental insults andvisual tasking on eighteen subjects, between the age of 18–25,by evaluating corneal fluorescein staining and conjunctivalredness.
Methods:
Eighteen subjects (n=36 eyes) underwent ophthalmicevaluations in the morning (7am–10am), and in the evening(9:00pm–11:30pm, after performing a standardized visualtask). Both morning and evening evaluations consisted of oculardiscomfort and activity limitation questionnaires, contrastsensitivity, blink rate, conjunctival redness, TFBUT, fluorescein/ lissamine green staining (standardized 0 to 20 point scaleevaluating 5 regions).
Results:
All subjects demonstrated fluorescein and lissaminestaining in the morning. Sixteen of eighteen individuals hadconjunctival redness in the morning. Fourteen of eighteen subjectsexperienced a decrease in contrast sensitivity. Twelve of thirty–sixeyes demonstrated an increase in ocular discomfort.
Conclusions:
This data demonstrates that all individuals testedhad corneal fluorescein staining in the morning and by the endof the day this group showed a worsening of corneal staining,conjunctival redness, contrast sensitivity, and ocular discomfort.
Keywords: cornea: tears/tear film/dry eye • cornea: clinical science • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: treatment/prevention assessment/controlled clinical trials