This Woman Lost Her Vision Due To A Smartphone, Tweet Goes Viral

With the attention span of humans going shorter every day, we are going all the way out with smartphones, smart watches, tabs, and laptops. However, little do we understand how it has a significant effect on our health. In a tweet that went viral recently, a Hyderabad-based doctor, Dr Sudhir Kumar, explained how a woman lost her vision due to the use of smartphones.

“A common habit resulted in severe #vision impairment in a young woman,” the doctor wrote.

Cause of Woman’s Vision Loss

A 30-year-old woman named Manju had severe disabling vision symptoms for one and a half years, Dr Kumar mentioned. This included seeing floaters, bright flashes of light, dark zig-zag lines, and at times inability to see or focus on objects.

There were moments when Manju could not see anything for several seconds. This occurred mostly at night when she got up to use the washroom. After a detailed evaluation by an eye specialist, everything was found to be normal, and so she was asked to rule out neurological causes, Dr Kumar tweeted.

A common habit resulted in severe #vision impairment in a young woman

1. 30-year old Manju had severe disabling vision symptoms for one and half years. This included seeing floaters, bright flashes of light, dark zig zag lines and at times inability to see or focus on objects.

— Dr Sudhir Kumar MD DM🇮🇳 (@hyderabaddoctor) February 6, 2023

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Later, Dr Kumar reviewed her history and said that her symptoms had started after she quit her job as a beautician in order to take care of her specially-abled child. During this time she picked up a new habit of browsing through her smartphone for several hours daily, sometimes as much as over two hours at night with the lights switched off.

Diagnosis Of The Woman’s Vision Loss

Following his review, Dr Kumar said that “The diagnosis was obvious now.” The doctor found out that Manju was suffering from smartphone vision syndrome (SVS). This was caused due to long-term use of devices such as computers, smartphones or tablets, which can cause various eye-related disabling symptoms, also referred as computer vision syndrome (CVS) or digital vision syndrome.

“I did not order any investigations nor did I prescribe any medicines (even though Manju requested, as she was anxious). I counseled her about the possible cause for her vision impairment and suggested her to minimize the use of smartphone. #MedTwitter #NeuroTwitter”

As per Dr Kumar’s tweet, Manju was anxious as she feared something severely impaired with her nerves but was finally determined to take corrective action. The doctor quoted her saying, "instead of minimizing, I will stop looking at smartphone screen, unless absolutely necessary. In any case, my phone use is recreational."

How Manju’s Eyesight Improved

After a month’s review of Manju’s condition, she was deemed absolutely fine, the doctor said. Her vision impairment of 18 months had gone. He further added that she had normal eyesight, and did not see any floaters or flashes of light. Moreover, her momentary loss of vision at night had also stopped. “Our suspicion was proved right,” he said.

20-20-20 Rule

In the Twitter thread, Dr Kumar also shared some tips to avoid such conditions. He suggests one should avoid looking at screens of digital devices for long because it can cause severe and disabling vision-related problems. He has also advised to take a 20-second break, every 20 min, to look at something 20 feet away while using a digital screen (20-20-20 rule).

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Smartphone-Induced Blindness

Further, he mentioned that there have been many cases of transient smartphone-induced blindness reported in people using smartphones in bed in complete darkness.

“Spectral peaks for smartphones are very similar to short-wavelength blue visible light. Damage to retina caused by light, especially blue light is well-established. A case of retina damage causing blurring of vision in both eyes due to smartphone use at nights was reported,” he added.