Prevalence of dry eye disease among medical students in a tertiary care center: A cross sectional study

Dry eye disease is a multifactorial disease of the tears and ocular surface that results in symptoms of discomfort, visual disturbance, and tear film instability with potential damage to the ocular surface, it is accompanied by increased osmolarity of the tear film and inflammation of the ocular surface. Aim is to estimate the prevalence of Dry eye disease (DED) among medical students. In this prospective, cross-sectional study, after getting informed consent 100 medical students were evaluated using the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) questionnaire, average daily screen time and routine ophthalmological examination, Schirmer's test, and tear film break-up time (TBUT) as a screening method for identifying DED. The Data thus collected is entered in Microsoft excel sheet & analyzed using SPSS 20.0 version. Descriptive statistics were applied to summarize the demographic data, comparisons between categorical variables analyzed using Fisher's exact test. The prevalence of DED among study participants was 43%, with 30% of students having mild DED. There is a significant association between screen time and DED (p<0.05). The prevalence of DED among medical students is rising as a result of an increase in screen usage.