30-year-old Hyderabad woman goes temporarily blind due to smartphone usage: how to protect yourself

A smartphone caused blindness, here’s how

Dr Sudhir Kumar, who goes by the username @hyderabaddoctor, said that his patient was diagnosed with blindness after using her smartphone frequently in the dark for roughly 1.5 years. The doctor listed floaters, dark zigzag patterns, bright flashes of light, and occasionally trouble focusing on or seeing specific objects as the symptoms.

The doctor described the instances where she occasionally experienced brief periods of vision loss. This mostly happened when she got up at night to use the restroom. She underwent a thorough evaluation by an eye specialist, and the results were normal.

After reviewing her medical history, the doctor discovered that she had developed a new habit of using her smartphone for several hours every day, including for a number of hours at night while the lights were out.

According to the doctor, she was diagnosed with smartphone vision syndrome (SVS). The doctor claimed he didn’t request any tests or write any prescriptions. Instead, he advised her on the potential causes of her eyesight impairment and to use her smartphone less.

At the one-month checkup, the doctor discovered that his patient was in perfect health and that her 18-month eyesight impairment was no longer present. Additionally, she no longer experienced a brief loss of eyesight at night.

How to protect your eyes while using smartphones?

The doctor dropped a piece of advice for smartphone users: the 20-20-20 rule. According to the doctor, one must take 20-second break in every 20 minutes to look at something 20 feet away while using a digital screen.

What is smartphone vision syndrome?

Smartphone vision syndrome is a collection of eye and vision issues brought on by close work while using a digital screen. Given that students in schools and colleges and anyone else who spends more time in front of a screen than usual, it has become one of the growing well-being concerns linked to innovation.

A study, published in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, showed that students who take online classes are more likely to develop smartphone vision syndrome because their research revealed a link between digital vision syndrome (DVS) and the risk factors related to the length of exposure, proximity to the screen, and size of the screen being used.