Evaluation of eyelid features’ changes before and after COVID-19 pandemic amongst healthcare and home office workers

Purpose To evaluate the eyelid features’ changes after N95 face mask (FM) usage in healthcare workers through the new type of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and make a comparison with home-office workers as a control group with a computer vision algorithm. Materials and methods Sixty healthcare workers and forty control participants with similar demographic features included. Standardized biometric photographs which were taken before and after the COVİD-19 pandemic, analyzed by the ImageJ program (NIH, Bethesda, Md.) software. The distances between the central light reflex on the cornea and the upper (UE) and lower eyelid (LE) were recorded as the marginal reflex distances. (MRD1, MRD2 respectively) Parameters of pretarsal show (PTS) of UE and brow pupil diameter (BPD) were analyzed for both of the eyes. Results There were no significant differences among the groups’ measurements before the COVID-19 pandemic. In healthcare workers’ group after the pandemic, values of MRD1, PTS, BPD showed a significant decrease in their right eye ( p = 0.001, p = 0.002, p = 0.001 respectively) and same values reduced in the left eyes as well when compared with pre-pandemic measurements. ( p = 0.048, p = 0.001, p = 0.001 respectively) PTS and BPD values were decreased for both right and left eyes of the controls. ( p = 0.044, p = 0.001 and p = 0.001, p = 0.001 respectively) MRD1 measurements after the pandemic showed no difference either in the right or left eyes of the control group after the pandemic. ( p = 0.071 and p = 0.065 respectively). Discussion Results showed that both BPD and PTS values decreased independently from the previous FM usage in both of the groups. Even though MRD1 values remained within the normal values, a significant decrease was detected in the healthcare workers group which suggested the cause was newly developed upper eyelid (UE) dermatochalasis after long hours of FM usage. Although it is hard to make a truly objective evaluation both usage of standardized biometric photographs and a computer-based measurement system makes the results reliable.