asthenopia
Asthenopia is any symptom associated with use of the eyes, typically eyestrain and headache. The word literally means weakness of the eyes or vision, so the term is best kept for symptoms that arise from a visual or ocular anomaly.1 Complaints range from redness, heaviness, dryness, and soreness of the eyes to pain around the eyes, frontal and occipital headaches, easy fatigue, and sometimes diplopia. The symptoms tend to lessen or disappear when the patient stops close work.2
Asthenopia can arise from internal factors, such as binocular and accommodative disorders, or from external factors such as dry eye.1 Muscular asthenopia develops if the amplitudes of motor fusion cannot cope with a heterophoria. Refractive asthenopia comes from uncorrected refractive error, including aniseikonia.2 Symptoms are much more common with sustained close work at one distance than with distance vision.2 In the workplace, glare and reflections cause light-induced eyestrain, and treatment of computer-related symptoms combines correction of refractive, binocular, and accommodative problems with care of dry eye and proper ergonomics.3
More detail
Vertical deviations are especially likely to cause asthenopia, since vertical fusional amplitudes are generally limited. Asthenopia can also follow a debilitating illness, when the patient's energy is too low to overcome a heterophoria with the usual ease, and these symptoms are usually transient.2 Asthenopia tends to appear in the last years of high school or college or in professional work with prolonged close application, and rarely, if ever, in preschool children.2
Sources (8)
- Pickwell's Binocular Vision Anomalies, ch. 2
- von Noorden and Campos, Binocular Vision and Ocular Motility, ch. 10
- Scheiman and Wick, Clinical Management of Binocular Vision, ch. 20
- American Academy of Ophthalmology (2023) Asthenopia - EyeWiki. Available at: https://eyewiki.aao.org/Asthenopia (Accessed: 5 May 2024).
- American Optometric Association (2023) Computer Vision Syndrome. Available at: https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-and-vision-conditions/computer-vision-syndrome (Accessed: 5 May 2024).
- Coles‐Brennan, C., Sulley, A. and Young, G. (2019) 'Management of digital eye strain', Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 102(1), pp. 18–29.
- Sheppard, A.L. and Wolffsohn, J.S. (2018) 'Digital eye strain: prevalence, measurement and amelioration', BMJ Open Ophthalmology, 3(1), p. e000146.
- Vilela, M.A.P. et al. (2015) 'Asthenopia in children', Current Opinion in Ophthalmology, 26(5), pp. 343–347.
Reviewed October 2026