Chief & Presenting Author: Dr.Saroj Gupta

Abstract

Purpose-To investigate the protective behaviour of time spent outdoors on myopia progression in children.Methods- A prospective study was done in children between 7 and 14 years of age. Myopia progression was evaluated 6 monthly for two years. Parents were asked to record daily outdoor activity of the child in hours per day at school and home. The magnitude of the association between time spent in outdoor activity and myopia progression was determined by two mixed-effects models. Results- Total 495 participants completed three visits during the study period. Intra-individual association between SE and activity scores (in hours) for three subsequent visits was calculated by repeated measures correlation as – 0.26 (– 0.21 to – 0.30, p-value = 0.001), which showed a statistically significant negative directional relationship between outdoor activity and myopia. Conclusion-. Each hour increase in outdoor activity per day had a protective effect on myopia progression in follow-up visits.