Doha: In September 2021, a research study completed by seven Qatar University Department of Public Health students was accepted for publication in the Medicine Journal. It was overseen by Dr Mujahed Shraim, Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Health. The project was entitled “The relationship between smartphone use and dry eye disease: A systematic review with a narrative synthesis”.
There were a lot of people involved in the study, including Khaloud Al-Marri and Maha Al Qashoti as well as Hissa Al Zoqari, Usra Elshaikh, Alya Naqadan, Raghad Saeed, and Jameela Faraj. In order to comprehensively analyse and synthesise evidence on the link between smartphone usage and dry eye illness, a bibliographic database search of Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, and PsychINFO was undertaken from their creation through January 15, 2021.
Furthermore, at least two review authors independently conducted study screening, full-text evaluation, study selection and exclusion, data extraction, and quality assessment. The review comprised three cross-sectional studies and a non-randomised clinical trial. In order to summarise the link between smartphone usage and dry eye illness, a narrative synthesis of the data was utilised due to the variety of study designs and association measures.
All of the included research was carried out in South Korea with schoolchildren, college students, or young adults. Three of the four studies that were analyzed indicated a link between the usage of smartphones and dry eye illness. According to the findings, there is some evidence that using a computer increases your risk of developing dry eyes.
However, the strength of this data is weak because there is just a little high-quality research in the field. They also came to the conclusion that further high-quality research is needed to examine the link between smartphone use and dry eye illness and to discover the processes behind this possible connection. This information is critical in educating the public about the dangers of smartphone usage on eye health and in creating clinical recommendations for a new eye disease that might be caused by excessive smartphone use.