Original Article EVALUATION OF THE FREQUENCY OF COMPLICATIONS OF WORKING WITH COMPUTERS IN A GROUP OF YOUNG ADULT COMPUTER USERS

Objective: To evaluate the complications of working with computer in a group of students of computer sciences. Methodology: In a descriptive-analytic study, we evaluated 150 students (58 males and 92 females) 18 to 30 years of age who worked with computers for two to twelve hours a day. The designed questionnaires were handed out to the students and the data collected were analyzed by the chi-square test. Results: In these young adult computer users, the complications were evident when duration of using computer exceeds two hours a day. Ophthalmic complications and other complications (musculo-skeletal) were present in 26 % and 14 % of the computer users, respectively. The most frequent ophthalmic complication was ocular pain (41%) while the least common one was blurred near vision (5.1%). The most common non-ophthalmic complications were low back pain (42.9%) and headache (38.1%) and the least frequent one was shoulder pain (19%). Conclusion: Young adult computer users who work on computers for more than two hours daily experience ophthalmic and musculo-skeletal complications and frequency of the complications tends to increase in those who work with computer daily