It wasn't too many years ago that the primary concerns in the area of occupational medicine were to prevent traumatic injuries in our industrial plants. Today, occupational health and safety concerns are focused on the office worker, particularly those workers who spend a considerable amount of time at computer displays. Even though these health problems are subtle compared to the serious injuries to which many blue collar workers are exposed, they have become a primary concern in large part because of our shift towards office jobs.

The vision problems at computers result in visual inefficiencies and in eye-related symptoms. The causes for the inefficiencies and the visual symptoms are individual vision disorders and/or poor visual ergonomics. The symptoms occur whenever the visual demands of the task exceed the visual abilities of the individual. For example, many individuals have marginal vision disorders such as uncorrected refractive errors, accommodative disorders, or binocular vision disorders that do not cause symptoms when performing less demanding visual tasks. Likewise, there are numerous aspects of the computer and its work environment which make it a more demanding visual task than others - therefore, more individuals are put beyond their threshold for experiencing symptoms.

The vision problems of computer users are very real, they are very prevalent and we know most of the bases for the problems. The visual symptoms can largely be resolved with proper management of the environment and by providing proper visual care for the computer worker.

Prescribing for presbyopia is second nature to any eye doctor, but the presbyopic computer user requires special prescribing considerations. This usually requires a different prescription and lens design from that which meets the other daily visual needs of the patient.

This course covers presbyopia and dry eye as they relate to Computer Vision Syndrome. It includes the following topics: