You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Ophthalmology
Research
Prevalence of dry eye disease in visual display terminal workers: a systematic review and meta-analysis
  1. Romain Courtin1,2,
  2. Bruno Pereira3,
  3. Geraldine Naughton4,
  4. Alain Chamoux2,
  5. Frédéric Chiambaretta1,
  6. Charlotte Lanhers2,
  7. Frédéric Dutheil2,3,4,5,6,7
  1. 1University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand (CHU), Department of Ophthalmology, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  2. 2University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand (CHU), Preventive and Occupational Medicine, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  3. 3University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand (CHU), Clinical Research Direction, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  4. 4Australian Catholic University, Faculty of Health, School of Exercise Science, Melbourne, Australia
  5. 5University Clermont Auvergne, Laboratory of Metabolic Adaptations to Exercise in Physiological and Pathological conditions EA3533, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  6. 6Research Centre in Human Nutrition (CRNH) Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  7. 7CNRS UMR 6024, Psychological & Psychosocial Stress Team, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  1. Correspondence to Dr Frédéric Dutheil; frederic.dutheil{at}acu.edu.au

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the prevalence and risk factors of dry eye disease (DED) in workers using visual display terminals (VDT).

Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Data sources We searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase and Science Direct databases for studies reporting DED prevalence in VDT workers.

Results 16 of the 9049 identified studies were included, with a total of 11 365 VDT workers. Despite a global DED prevalence of 49.5% (95% CI 47.5 to 50.6), ranging from 9.5% to 87.5%, important heterogeneity (I2=98.8%, p<0.0001) was observed. Variable diagnosis criteria used within studies were: questionnaires on symptoms, tear film anomalies and corneoconjunctival epithelial damage. Some studies combined criteria to define DED. Heterogeneous prevalence was associated with stratifications on symptoms (I2=98.7%, p<0.0001), tears (I2=98.5%, p<0.0001) and epithelial damage (I2=96.0%, p<0.0001). Stratification of studies with two criteria adjusted the prevalence to 54.0% (95% CI 52.1 to 55.9), whereas studies using three criteria resulted in a prevalence of 11.6% (95% CI 10.5 to 12.9). According to the literature, prevalence of DED was more frequent in females than in males and increased with age.

Conclusions Owing to the disparity of the diagnosis criteria studied to define DED, the global prevalence of 49.5% lacked reliability because of the important heterogeneity. We highlight the necessity of implementing common DED diagnostic criteria to allow a more reliable estimation in order to develop the appropriate preventive occupational actions.

  • OPHTHALMOLOGY
  • PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
  • PUBLIC HEALTH

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-009675

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text