Prevalence and severity of smartphone addiction and dry eye disease in university students

Session Details

Session Title: Medical Cornea & Biomechanics

Session Date/Time: Sunday 23/09/2018 | 08:00-10:00

Paper Time: 08:18

Venue: Room A3, Podium 3

First Author: : K.Shih HONG KONG

Co Author(s): :    H. Wai   V. Jhanji   L. Tong              

Abstract Details

Purpose:

• To describe the prevalence and severity of smartphone addiction and dry eye disease in university students • To investigate the association between smartphone addiction and dry eye disease in university students

Setting:

A cross sectional study was conducted on second-year undergraduate students at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Methods:

62 consecutive second-year undergraduate students were recruited. Dry eye assessment was done with the SBM Sistemi ICP Dry Eye Analyzer (Torino, Italy) to evaluate non-invasive tear break-up time (NITBUT). Ocular symptoms were evaluated via the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI). We adopted the Asia Dry Eye Society’s definition of DES; having an OSDI ≥ 13 and NITBUT ≤ 5 seconds. Smart phone addiction was assessed using the Smartphone Addiction Scale- Short Version (SAS-SV). Addiction was defined as scores > 31 for men and > 33 for women. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Statistics software.

Results:

The prevalence of short TBUT DES was 38.7% among undergraduate university students (mean age 19.71 ± 1.44 years, female 45%). Mean smartphone addiction score was 31.35 ± 8.26 with 41.5% of subjects having significant smartphone addiction. Average time of smartphone use was 5.13 ± 3.18 hours and average daily sleeping hours was 6.54 ± 1.12. Subjects with significant smartphone addiction had higher OSDI scores and NIKBUT times as well as shorter sleep duration than those who were deemed not addicted. There was significant inverse correlation between smartphone addiction severity and average sleep duration.

Conclusions:

Both smartphone addiction and short TBUT dry eye disease are common problems in university students. Subjects addicted to smartphones had more severe dry eye symptoms, shorter tear breakup times and shorter sleep duration. Smartphone addiction severity was significantly inversely correlated with daily sleep duration.

Financial Disclosure:

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