Tear Film Break-Up Time and Dry Eye Disease Severity in a Large Norwegian Cohort

Abstract

This study evaluated to what extent tear film break-up time (TFBUT) could discriminate pathological scores for other clinical tests and explore the associations between them. Dry eye patients (n = 2094) were examined for ocular surface disease index (OSDI), tear film osmolarity (Osm), TFBUT, blink interval, ocular protection index (OPI), ocular surface staining (OSS), Schirmer I test, meibomian expressibility, meibomian quality, and meibomian gland dysfunction. The results were grouped into eight levels of break-up time (≤2, ≥3, ≤5, ≥6, ≤10, ≥11, ≤15, and ≥16) with or without sex stratification. Receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used to study TFBUT’s discriminative power and the associations among the tests, respectively. Above and below each TFBUT’s cut-off, all of the parameters indicated significant difference between groups, except OSDI (cut-off 15 s) and Osm (cut-offs 5 s–15 s). At TFBUT cut-off of 2 s, sex difference could be detected for OSDI, Osm, and OSS. OPI presented the strongest discriminative power and association with TFBUT in sharp contrast to Osm, holding the poorest discriminative power with no significant correlation. The remaining parameters were within the poor to very poor categories, both with regard to discrimination and correlation. In conclusion, patients with lower TFBUT presented with more severe DED parameters at all four defined cut-off values.