An examination of the underlying causes of asthenopia in school-going children: A cross-sectional study

• Author Details:   
• Nirmal Maity ^*
• Ashima Goyal
• Renu Thakur
• Navneet Sharma

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Background: School-going children frequently report eye strain and headaches while reading or performing any near work.

Aim: An investigation into the underlying elements that are responsible for asthenopia is the purpose of the present study.

Materials and Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was designed with school-aged children, ranging in age from seven to sixteen years old, who presented with active asthenopia symptoms being the participants. Each and every child was subjected to a full eye examination, which included a detailed history of asthenopia symptoms and screen usage, fogging and cycloplegic refraction, binocular vision evaluation, and the CISS questionnaire.

Result: Total of 140 school children were examined with mean age of 13.2 ± 2.7 years. Average number of symptoms in asthenopia child was 2.41 ± 1.13. Headache was found more common (78.57%) followed by ocular pain (50.71%), occasional blurriness (43.57%) and watering (31.43%). 6.25% child was found emmetrope. Among these, mild to moderate hyperopic error was more common (SH- 29.97%, SHA- 12.4%, CHA- 9.14%). CMA was found in 16.18%, MA was in 11.4% of the children. Average screen time was found 2.63 ± 2.01 hours/day. Mean CISS score was 15.96 ± 7.6 with a maximum 33 and a minimum value was 2. Accommodative anomalies were most common (37.5%) followed by CI (17.65%) and Difficulty to relax accommodation in 16.18%. Uncorrected refractive error (13.97%) and over corrected Myopia (7.35%) also shows significant asthenopia symptoms.

Conclusion: This study shows that screen time, refractive errors, and binocular vision anomalies are associated with asthenopia in school-aged children. The data imply that mild to severe hyperopic errors and accommodative anomalies are critical to asthenopia development and CISS questionnaire is a useful screening tool for asthenopia symptom’s detection of school going students.

Keywords: Asthenopia, Binocular vision, NSBVD, Refractive error, Screen time.