Say stop to the visual fatigue!

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Pains of heads, tingles of the eyes. The visual fatigue is the share daily many workers on screen. To make face, a treatment ophtalmologique and some modifications of the workplace there permit to keep good foot, good eye!

More and more inescapable element of the modern world, the computers are part of the daily of millions of salaried employees. But work on screen is accused of causing the visual unrests, an ocular drought, etc. That in it is really? Doctissimo makes the point under the understanding and practiced eye of the Pr. Jean-Claude Hache, president of the scientific society of ocular correction.

There are fatigue and fatigue....

Fatigue bound to work on screen is directly proportional to the time passed before its console but also to the quality of the observer's vision. This sensation can don three shapes:

Visual fatigue: It is the most frequent phenomenon with the sensation of more being as effective so much as regards to the vision that mentally. It is rarely about a decrease of the acuteness, but more often a binocular unbalance with impressions of pictures that unfold or become fuzzy. This type of fatigue appears more frequently if the amétropie or longsightedness is not corrected;
Ocular fatigue: The eyes that prick, irritations, sensations of dry eye. these characteristic signs are bound to a particularly badly lived lachrymal secretion insufficiency. Normally, the frequency of the wink is the order of 12 to 20 per minute, permitting the formation of a new lachrymal movie before the rupture of the precedent. But work on screen is associated to a reduction of this frequency and therefore a drainage of the surface of the eyes;
General fatigue: This last appears by headaches, but also of the rachidian pains (pain of back) bound to problems of stance.

Fatigue can also have a direct influence on the quality of work done. Thus, several studies reveal a deleterious impact on efficiency defined by the rhythm of reading and the capacity to integrate the information. This parameter can be appreciated thanks to one photo-oculographe (or follower of look), that permits the measure and the analysis of the direction of the look by the registration of the ocular course at the time of the follow-up of a target in movement or the exploration of a text. Result: this efficiency decreases as the length of work on screen increases. An argument for more to leave work too late.

More often a developer of visual unrests.

If the time of work on screen is too long, fatigue can appear because of the focusing on the screen but also of the immobility bound to postural problems. But fatigue can also occur earlier if the person endures a trouble visual non correct version, mainly astigmatism or long-sightedness.

In the cases of latent long-sightedness occurring between 30 and 40 years, fatigue intervenes more frequently and more quickly. This type of work acts then like a developer of this trouble of the view associated closely to a fuzzy vision whereas the vision from afar remained correct. If the long-sightedness is light, it can pass unobserved. More important, it can drag a convergent squinting, an important visual fatigue and of the pains of heads.

When the two pictures of the two eyes don't superimpose themselves more precisely, people can endure hétérophorie (tendency to squinting). Squinting designates the absence of parallelism between the optic axes of the two eyes at the time of the fixing of one point. The origin of squinting can be bound to a strong long-sightedness or a hereditary origin. According to age to which he is taken in charge, his treatment varies between glasses and gymnastic of the eyes or surgery.

The myopia can pass unobserved however because the vision closely (clean to work on screen) is unaltered, contrary to the vision from afar.

The physicians of work are especially attentive to these problems. They won't hesitate to send their patient toward an ophthalmologist in case of suspicion of unrest of the view or pathology associated.

Cape on our anti-fatigue advice!

To avoid this phenomenon of visual fatigue, he agrees surely to correct his view with adapted solutions: glasses (with for the far-sighted of the proximity glasses, also named glasses interview), lentils (today better adapted) or refractive surgery for the myopia.

Then, some measures of common sense permit to improve your environment of work:

To avoid the reflections on screen. The recourse to the filters antireflet must not make itself that in case of impossibility of other amenities, because they can decrease the contrast and can finally embarrass reading;
The field of vision must contain neither window nor source of direct light to avoid the blinding. The screen must be thus perpendicular to the source of light;
To use the blinds or the mobile curtains preventing the reflections;
To prefer sources of indirect lights (halogens) or individual (lamp of office). Of the ceiling lights with sources of light framed (with grids limiting the problems of reflection);
To impose themselves of pauses and to privilege the alternation of the tasks. A change of activity (or of moments of non fixing of the screen) must intervene either 5 min. for 45 min. of work, or 15 min. every two hours according to the experts. But of the small visual station wagons every 15 min. can make the business also.

Such advice permits to improve the general situation of visual fatigue. At the time of the convention of the French society of ophthalmology (SFO), a survey driven on 465 patients suffering from visual fatigue been presented by the Dr Claude Speeg-Schatz, ophthalmologist in Strasbourg. After having followed the elementary advice, more of the half of the salaried employees saw their situation improving. The persistence of the visual fatigue at the other is probably bound according to the authors to a defect of follow-up of the advice given by the physician of work, of an absence of ergonomic correction of the station or the absence of hold in account of the modifications of winks. Of the results that underline the necessity of a good coordination between physicians of work and ophthalmologists to fight efficiently against the visual fatigue.

But the research don't focus more solely on the eye-screen duet but rather on the new body-eye-screen trio. Recent research in neurosciences underlined thus that the stance and therefore the direction of the look can influence on the perception of information.

2009-05-15