Evaluation of the relationship between smartphone addiction and DRY eye disease in medical faculty students

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We included 325 students studying at Ondokuz Mayıs University Faculty of Medicine in this study. We asked the survey questions to the volunteers between 16.11.2022 and 26.12.2022. The Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV) was used to evaluate students' smartphone addiction, and the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) scale was used to evaluate dry eye disease. We asked the participants 37 survey questions, 15 of which included demographic information. SPSS v22 was used to analyze the data, and the significance level was accepted as p<0.05. RESULTS: We included 325 volunteers, 191 women (58,8%) and 134 men (41,2%). The mean age of the participants was 21,57 ±2,25. The mean OSDI score was 17,5 ± 18,17, and the SAS-SV score was 27,0 ± 10,11. OSDI score was statistically significant and higher in women, eyeglass wearers, and refractive errors (p=0,001, p<0,001, p<0,001, respectively). SAS-SV score was significant and higher in women (p=0,006). In the correlation analysis, a positive and significant result was obtained between the SAS-SV score and OSDI score (p<0,001), year of phone usage (p=0,035), and screen usage time (p<0,001). A positive correlation was found between OSDI score and SAS-SV score (p<0,001) and screen time (p=0,024). CONCLUSION: Dry eye was more common in women, glasses wearers and those with refractive errors. We found that the SAS-SV score is a risk factor for dry eye disease in women. We found that both SAS-SV score and daily screen use time were risk factors for dry eye disease in men. Smartphone addiction increases in direct proportion to smartphone ownership and daily screen time in both genders.