Authors : Souvik Sama Mal, Souvik Sama Mal, Soumen Chakraborty, Soumen Chakraborty
DOI : 10.18231/j.ijceo.2020.023
Volume : 6
Issue : 1
Year : 2020
Page No : 103-107
Aim: To find out an association, if any, between smoking and dry eye diseases and whether it has any
relation to the number of cigarettes smoked.
Materials and Methods: Patients attending the hospital outpatient department were enquired about
smoking and then given the option to enrol in the study following a written and informed consent.
Depending on the number of cigarettes they smoked, patients were divided in three groups, namely low,
moderate and high smokers based on the heaviness of Smoking Index. They were labelled as Group A,
B and C respectively. Symptomatic assessment of each group was done by the Ocular Surface Disease
Index (OSDI) questionnaire, and a score greater than 12 was considered meaningful. Clinical evaluation
was done by performing TBUT and Schirmer’s test. Respective cut off values were 10 seconds and 10 mm.
Deviations from established normal values were observed and analyzed.
Results: A total of 205 patients participated in this study of which 90.7% (n= 186) were males and 9.3%
(n= 19) were females. 30.7% (n= 63) patients were low smokers (Group A), 42.9% (n= 88) were moderate
smokers (Group B) and 26.3% (n= 54) were high smokers (Group C). The mean TBUT and OSDI scores
showed progressive deterioration from Group A to C, whereas the mean Schirmer’s values across all groups
remained relatively unaffected.
Conclusion: Cigarette smoking had a deleterious effect on the health of the ocular surface, but the aqueous
tear secretion remained unaffected.
Keywords: Smoking, Dry eyes, OSDI, TBUT, Schirmer’s test.