Expert (Medical) Assessment of the Main Patients Complaints with Computer Visual Syndrome

The purpose is to conduct an expert (medical) assessment of the main complaints of patients with symptoms of computer visual syndrome (CVS).

Methods: as part of the preliminary stage of work, an individual interview was performed (according to the standard developed methodology) with 100 patients aged 24–36 years, whose professional daily activity (at least 2 years) was characterized as visually-intense work associated with electronic systems displaying information (at least 4 hours a day) and with a fairly high level of responsibility for the final result. During the main stage of the study, a special questionnaire was developed, in which the identified complaints were transformed into questions. The task of the expert — ophthalmologist was to assess the relevance of each of the questions in terms of the severity of the impact on the “quality of life” of the patient. In this case, the assessment was carried out on a 10-point scale, where 0 points — the question is not relevant; 10 points — the question is very relevant. The study involved 96 ophthalmologists aged 41.3 ± 1.6 years (age range from 32 to 62 years) with an average of 17.3 ± 1.4 years of professional experience (range from 6 to 37 years).

Results: more pronounced “ocular” manifestations of the CVS were established (mean score — 8.0 ± 0.2, range from 5.0 to 9.4 points, the highest scores for 8 complaints from 8.6 to 9.4 points) compared with “visual” (average score — 6.5 ± 0.2, range from 4.1 to 8.8 points, the highest scores for 5 complaints from 7.8 to 8.8 points). A sufficiently high level of practical significance of “professional” subjective manifestations of the CVS has been established.

Conclusion. The obtained data can be basic in the framework of the prospective development of a questionnaire for assessing the “quality of life” of patients with CVS symptoms, since the use of an expert (medical) assessment of identified complaints from the position of the severity of a change in subjective status significantly increases the level of reliability, reliability, as well as meaningful and constructive validity methods of assessing the “quality of life”.

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