Purpose: To find out whether subjective evaluation of dry eye with OSDI questionnaire correlates with clinical tests of dry eye

Method: 111 patients between 30 & 60 years of age, coming to OPD of a tertiary care centre with symptoms of dry eye were taken for the study. The study subjects were made to fill up the OSDI questionnaire and the tear film of same subjects were analysed with schirmer tests & TBUT. People who had previous ocular surgeries or having acute or chronic ocular surface abnormalities were excluded. Tools used are validated OSDI questionnaire, schirmer strips, fluorescein strips and slit lamp. Data were entered in Microsoft excel data sheets and analysed using SPSS 16.

Results: Out of 73 patients who had dry eye (low schirmer and TBUT values) 71patients (97.26%) were having OSDI scores suggestive of dry eye. Among those 71 patients, 27 patients had severe dry eye scores (37 %), 22 had moderate scores (30.1 %) and 22 had mild scores (30.1 %). Out of 38 patients who did not have dry eye, 20 patients had OSDI scores suggestive of dry eye and among those 20; 9(23.7 %), 9(23.7%) & 2(5.3 %) had mild, moderate & severe OSDI scores respectively.

Conclusion: The sensitivity of OSDI Questionnaire as per this study is 97.26% in detecting dry eye. But the specificity of test is only 47.37%. The questionnaire can be used as screening tool for dry eye diseases.

Keywords: dry eye disease; tear film evaluation; OSDI Questionnaire; OSDI score.

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V Sahasranamam

Director, Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, Thiruvananthapuram-695001, India

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