Abstract
Purpose :
The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between myopia, amount of near work performed with electronic devices and asthenopic symptoms in school children.
Methods :
Various schools in the south east region of Sweden were contacted to take part in this study. Informed consent and a questionnaire were distributed with the help of teachers to 700 school children who were studying at different school levels (primary, junior high, senior high). The first part of the questionnaire consisted of ten questions testing their eye related symptoms. The second part of questionnaire quantified the amount of time they were spending with various electronic devices in a week. Among 700 children, 400 filled the questionnaire and replied out of which 232 were girls (58.0%) and 168 were boys (42.0%). Mean age was 14.5 ± 3.1 years (range: 8-20 years). Furthermore, all these children underwent non-cycloplegic refractometry of both eyes.
Results :
The prevalence of emmetropia was 70.0%, myopia was 24.3% and hyperopia was 5.7% on the right eye, and on the left eye the prevalence of emmetropia was 64.0%, myopia 25.8% and hyperopia 10.2%. Moreover, the eye related symptom score of the respondents ranged from 0 to 77 with an average of 14.3 ± 14.4 points. The mean time they spent in front of electronic devices in an average week was 47.5 ± 28.8 hours/week. There was no statistical significant difference between girls and boys in the amount of time they spent in front of electronic devices. This study also showed that older the participants were, the time they were spending on electronic devices were also more (r =0,32; p<0,001). There was a statistical significant but weak correlation between the eye related symptoms and the time spent in front of electronic devices (r = 0.21; p<0.001), and also between the eye related symptoms and age (r = 0.17; p<0.001). In this study there was no correlation found between myopia and the age the participants began using electronic devices. Likewise, no correlation was found between myopia and the time spent in front of electronic devices.
Conclusions :
A significant but weak correlation was found between eye related symptoms and the time spent in front of electronic devices. No correlation was found between myopia and the age the participants began using electronic devices or time spent in front of electronic devices.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.