Introduction:

During virtual classes in the context of Covid-19, students were exposed to digital screens for many hours, so they could present computer vision syndrome.

Objective:

To determine the frecuency of computer vision syndrome in sixth-year students of the faculty of human medicine of the Ricardo Palma University in the context of virtual education due to Covid-19 during the period October - November 2021.

Methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study in 147 sixth-year medical students who received virtual education at a peruvian university during 2021. A non-probability sampling was used for convenience and the SVI was evaluated with the SVI-Q questionnaire, in addition characteristics were evaluated. Demographics, visual preventive measures and eye diseases. The results were analyzed with SPSS v.21 for windows. The study was approved by the ethics committee. On the other hand, in an exploratory way, the factors associated with SVI were evaluated, for age the mann-whitney u test was used, and for the rest of the variables the fisher exact test was used. A value of p<0.05 was considered significant.

Results:

Most of the students were young adults (54%) and female (60%). The frequency of computer visual syndrome was 93%, it occurred in 94% of women and 90% of men. Most of the students reported having myopia (44%) and astigmatism (22%). Regarding visual symptoms, the students mainly presented tearing (7.9%), itching (7.6%), and headache (7.6%).

Conclusions:

in the present study, a high frequency of computer visual syndrome was found in medical students who took virtual classes.

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