Impact of screen exposure on pediatric vernal Keratoconjunctivitis: a survey during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.
Ital J Pediatr
; 48(1): 74, 2022 May 14.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1846855
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak pushed the Italian government to start a strict lockdown, replacing school attendance with long-distance learning. This caused reduced exposure to sunlight but increased exposure to screens. Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) is a chronic inflammatory ocular condition in which exposure to light plays a cardinal role. We conducted an online survey to evaluate the impact of screen exposure on children with VKC during the COVID-19 lockdown.METHODS:
We performed a survey-based observational study, asking patients followed at the Allergology clinics of Meyer Children's University Hospital in Florence and of Policlinico Umberto I in Rome to provide grading on 6 subjective ocular clinical manifestations presented during the lockdown and to give an estimate of their hours/day of screen exposure.RESULTS:
Mean scores of signs and symptoms increased homogeneously when studying patients exposed to longer screen time. When comparing scores collected in 2019 to those in 2020, there was not a significant reduction in clinical manifestations, although the situation differed between the two centers due to geographical differences in sunlight exposure.CONCLUSION:
During the lockdown, there was a reduction in sunlight exposure but conversely an increase in the time spent in front of screens that correlated with the worsening of VKC signs and symptoms in direct proportion to the hours/day of screen exposure. Our results also showed a statistically significant difference in the relative impact of long-distance learning on VKC clinical manifestations in the different Italian regions.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Conjunctivitis, Allergic
/
Screen Time
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Child
/
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Ital J Pediatr
Journal subject:
Pediatrics
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S13052-022-01253-2
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