JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Dry eye disease is a chronic inflammatory disease of ocular surface which affects millions of people throughout the world. Smartphone use as an effective healthcare tool has grown exponentially. ‘Dry eye or not?’ application was created to evaluating prevalence of symptomatic DE, for screening, and for providing feedback to users with symptomatic DE throughout the country.

Objective:

To compare the prevalence of symptomatic dry eye (DE), blink rate, maximum blink interval (MBI), and best spectacle-corrected visual acuity (BSCVA) between people with and without symptomatic DE, and to identify risk factors for symptomatic DE in Thailand.

Methods:

This cross-sectional study sourced data from the ‘Dry eye or not?’ smartphone application between November 2019 and July 2020. This application collected demographic data, Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) score, blink rate, MBI, BSCVA, and visual display terminal (VDT) use data. The criterion for symptomatic DE was OSDI score ≥13.

Results:

Prevalence of symptomatic DE among individuals using this smartphone application in Thailand was 85.76%, the Northeastern region of Thailand having the highest prevalence, followed by the Northern region. Worse BSCVA (P=0.022), increased blink rate (P<0.001), reduced MBI (P<0.001), female sex (P<0.001), and more than 6 hours of VDT use (P=0.004) were significantly associated with symptomatic DE. Older age and higher than Bachelor’s degree education were significantly less associated with symptomatic DE (P=0.026, and 0.005, respectively).

Conclusions:

Using this smartphone DE application, the prevalence of symptomatic DE in Thailand was 85.7%. Signs and risk factors could be also evaluated by using this smartphone DE application. Screening for DE by this application may allow the development of strategic plans for healthcare systems in Thailand.