Association between socio-demographic factors and eye diseases of italian university employees subjected to health surveillance: an observational study

Background. Workers exposed to occupational hazards for the ocular apparatus are subject to health surveillance which includes an eye examination. Objectives. To assess the prevalence of eye diseases among University employees and analyze the association between socio-demographic factors and eye conditions by analyzing computerized data. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted on the collected data. A univariate analysis and a logistic regression were performed to verify the association between eye diseases and socio-demographic factors, such as gender and age. This study was carried out using a database of computerized eye charts of a University of Rome, referring to the 2017-2018 period. Results. The sample study consists of 4503 employees, 44.86% men 55.13% women. The average age was 44.53 years. The most frequent eye conditions in University workers are refractive ones: myopia (53.87%), astigmatism (37.95%), presbyopia (34.06%), hypermetropia (14.25%). Multivariate analysis shows that increasing age is associated with an increase in risk with all outcome variables, except for myopia (OR = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97 - 0.98). Moreover, women have a lower risk of astigmatism (OR = 0.83; C 95%: 0.73 - 0.94), keratoconus (OR = 0.22; 95% CI: 0.09 - 0.54) and dyschromatopsia (OR = 0.08; 95% CI: 0.02 - 0.34). Conclusions. Considering the high number of workers involved in the study, the frequency of exposure to occupational risks and the exposure to multiple risk factors at the same time in some categories of workers, the health surveillance resulted to be a useful tool for monitoring and control of eye diseases in workers at risk.