Mobile Games Effects on Visual Acuity of Primary School Students and the Role of Chewable Multivitamins in the Improvement.

Abdul Qader, Osamah Jihad; Ibraheem, Nisreen Mohammed

Children today encounter and utilize technology constantly both at home and in school. Television, DVDs, video games, the internet, cell phones and PDAs – all now play a formative role in many children’s development.Excessive use of mobile devices can cause eye problems like myopia (short-sightedness) and amblyopia (lazy eye) in young children. With young children increasingly playing for hours on end with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, this might grow to be a problem for them as well. The aim of this study was to assess mobile games effects on visual acuity of primary school students and the role of chewable multivitamins in the improvement.This study assessed 330 students from 4th,5th and 6th classes of three different primary schools. They were checked regarding visual acuity defects to determine the relationship between these defects and mobile games. The study was conducted at the period [October 2015-April 2017].Full ocular examination was done, including visual acuity, cycloplegic and non-cycloplegic refraction assessment. Most of the selected sample (69.7%) were normal, while (28.8%) were with impaired visual acuity secondary to refractive errors and (1.5%) without refractive errors.The results showed that there is significant association (strong) between visual acuity and mobile games, 33.5% only of students with normal visual acuity play mobile games, while 77.9% of students with refractive disorders play mobile games. This strong association is highly related to the time of playing, so that most of defects in visual acuity occurs in students with night time of mobile game playing 52.7%. Regarding the type of refractive errors, 56.7% was with hypermetropia, 33.78% was myopic and the remaining 9.46% was with astigmatism. Associated problems with students use of mobile games and refractive errors include wide range of complications, headache occurred in 40.54% of them, 70.3% complaining of reading problems (poor concentration, not clear words …etc.), red congested eyes in 20.3% and tic with abnormal lid movements in 12.2 % of them. The students with refractive errors subdivided into two groups, the first one received chewable multivitamin while the second group received placebo (nothing) and after 3 months of this clinical trial, there was strong association between refractive errors improvement and chewable multivitamins.

Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, 2019, Vol 13, Issue 4, p1425

0973-9122

Academic Journal

10.5958/0973-9130.2019.00501.2