Eyeworld

28 September 2018 EW NEWS & OPINION day. Watching television was 2.94 hours and 2.5 hours for men and women, respectively, and playing games and computer use was 0.49 hours and 0.34 hours for men and women, respectively. 3 A Common Sense Media survey of more than 1,700 parents found they spend, on average, 9 hours and 22 minutes us- ing a screen of some sort every day. 4 "We don't take care of our eyes," Dr. Akpek said. "We need to under- stand why we get dry eye as we get older and we need to be able to take care of it before it happens." She likened the preventative measures that she thinks should happen in eye care to the preventative mea- sures dentistry began instituting to improve oral health decades ago. Based on this latest research, Dr. Akpek said clinicians should realize that what patients describe and what providers see on clinical examination might not match. As such, she and her coauthors sug- gest stressing the surface of the eye, perhaps with prolonged reading as described in their research, to better simulate the conditions a patient might experience through the day. "It's like a stress test for angina. You examine the patient at rest, but you can't diagnose angina … if you don't do the stress test for the heart. You have to catch it right there during the exercising," Dr. Akpek explained. "We have to listen to our patients, understand what it is that they are talking about. We have to learn how to take care of the eyes, know why we get dry eye, and how not to get dry eye." EW References 1. Karakus S, et al. Effects of prolonged read- ing on dry eye. Ophthalmology. 2018. Epub ahead of print. 2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Computer and internet use at work summary. Economic News Release. August 2005. 3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. American Time Use Survey – 2017 Results. June 2018. 4. Common Sense Media. New report: parents spend more than nine hours a day with screen media. December 2016. Editors' note: Dr. Akpek has no finan- cial interests related to her comments. Contact information Akpek: esakpek@jhmi.edu seems to have this effect on the ocular surface and how it translates to changes in visual function. They also seek to answer questions like what would happen if the visually focused activity is even longer or if a short break can act as a recovery period. "Is it the blinking rate? Is it evaporation? Maybe it's the blurring of the vision because of the fast tear film breakup time because the tears are unstable. … We are in the process of measuring all these pa- rameters and analyzing the tear film before, after, and during reading, to see what's actually happening," Dr. Akpek said. Dr. Akpek said this research is important, especially in an age where reading and screen time is so prevalent. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' last survey regarding computer use at work in 2005, 55.5% of the employed populace used a computer. 2 One can surmise that percentage would be higher if the same survey was con- ducted today. More recent statistics from the American Time Use Survey found that men spent, on average, 0.25 hours a day reading for leisure while women spent 0.33 hours a Prolonged continued from page 26 Are you a fan of EyeWorld? Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/ EyeWorldMagazine

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