Assessing visual symptoms related to dry eye and refractive error in school students before and after online classes during COVID-19 pandemic

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major change in the mode of education from offline to online classes for the school students. Objectives: To determine if school students have developed symptoms related to dry eye. Methodology: Its descriptive cross-sectional study. This study was conducted in a reputed school in the city and 1000 students who had attended online classes during the covid-19 pandemic by the Department of Ophthalmology, Chettinad hospital and research institute, Kelambakkam, Tamil nadu, India Results: About 41% experienced redness of eye, 38% experienced blurring of vision, 36.6% had eye pain, 32% had burning sensation of eyes signs of dryness of eye. 50.2% had adequate distance between your gadget and eyes, 36.1 % had too close to eyes and 13.7 % had too far from eyes. Regarding the eye checkup, 43.7% never checked up their eyes, 11.6% does annual examination and 44.7% does rarely. Comparison between duration of Electronic Gadget usage per day during online class and offline class was significantly reduced after the offline class commencement. P value is 0.000001. Conclusion: There is significant Digital screen exposure time difference is observed during online and in offline classes. And its impact in visual refractive errors and computer vision syndrome