| Summary: | 碩士 === 中山醫學大學 === 生物醫學科學學系碩士班 === 103 === Backgrounds and purpose: Dry eye, the inability to keep ocular surface moist is one of the most commonly seen diseases in ophthalmology clinic. Its prevalence rate is about 5~35% globally.The etiology of dry eye is can be either tear secretion deficiency or excessive tear evaporation. Dry eye symptoms include dryness, fatigue, itchiness, grittiness, pain, burning, photophobia, temporary blurred vision, and keratopaphy, etc. According to previous studies, prevalence of dry eye seems to increase with age. However, in recent years, dry eye tends to happen frequently among young people as well. Currently, there isn’t enough detailed statistical information about dry eye in Taiwan. Therefore, it is our interest to investigate and analyze the risk factors and the prevalence of dry eye disease among Taiwanese adults.
Methods: The cross-sectional study included 208 subjects consisted of over 35 years of age with dry eye symptoms. After tear secretion test, corneal staining test and tear break-up time test, patients were diagnosed to have dry eye syndromes or not. These patients were then given a questionnaire to investigate the potential risk factors for causing dye eye. Personal information, health history, medication taken, life style, working conditions as well as dry symptoms were all included in the questionnaire.
Results: The prevalence of dry eye was 44.2% among our subjects. Although more young people are getting dry eye, our statistics still supported the fact that the prevalence of dry eye increases with age. Women (49.6%) had higher chance of getting dry eye disease than men (27.2%).
Dry eye was significantly associated with gender, age, education level, number of dry eye patients in the family, symptoms of dryness & grittiness, severity of symptoms, arthritis, use of benzodiazepine, smoking, amount of sleep, use of artificial tears, occupation, and work environment (all p<0.05). The result of risk assessment was similar.
Therefore, having these risk factors, would give one a higher chance of getting dry eye disease. Through regression analysis, we also found dryness, grittiness, and use of artificial tears to be more reliable factors for predicting dry eye disease than others.
Conclusion: In addition to factors such as gender, age, educational level and number of dry eye patients in the family, dry eye is also closely related to health history, medications taken, life style, and working conditions. To better understand this disease, other potential risk factors should also be investigated in the future and public patient education is the best solution to prevent or improve this ocular abnormality.
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