The Relationship between Visual Discomfort and Academic Performance among Medical Students at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Background: Visual discomfort or asthenopia is presented through unpleasant somatic and perceptual symptoms including headaches, fatigue, light sensitivity, blurred text, diplopia, movement of letters, and fading and impaired reading performance. Its etiology can be prolonged exposure to near work tasks such as reading or computer use. The American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus stated that vision problems could negatively affect learning.

Objectives: To measure the prevalence of visual discomfort among the medical students at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and evaluate its effect on their academic performance.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2018 at KAU in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with 417 medical students. The data were collected using an electronic questionnaire that was sent to their phone numbers. The statistical analyses were done using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software version 21.

Results: The visual discomfort symptom scores demonstrated that 87% of the participants scored low, while 12.2% scored moderately; none of the participants scored high. We did not find any significant relationship between visual discomfort and students' cumulative GPA or GPA of the last semester. We noted that the most common visual discomfort symptoms were associated with reading and light sensitivity.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated that visual discomfort symptoms did not affect the cumulative or last semester GPA.