Gravidez e disfun？？o lacrimal

purpose: to assess the prevalence of lacrimal dysfunction during pregnancy comparing it to non-pregnant women and to correlate these findings with obstetric history. methods: we interviewed 150 pregnant and 150 non-pregnant women for symptoms of dry eyes and obstetric history. both groups underwent schirmer i testing and responded to a questionnaire on dry eye symptoms. patients with collagen diseases, medications associated with dryness of mucous membranes, hepatitis c infection and aids, previous intraocular inflammation and eye surgery were excluded. data were analyzed by the χ2 and fisher tests when the data were nominal and by the student′s t-test and mann-whitney test when numerical. the level of significance was set at 5%. results: the two groups did not differ in symptoms of lacrimal dysfunction. the results of schirmer's test were equal in both groups for the right eye (p=0.3) and left eye (p=0.3). however, pregnant women had a higher prevalence of at least one dry eye (p=0.004). the occurrence of dry eye in both groups (patients and controls) was associated with a greater number of full-term pregnancies/patient (p=0.04) but not with pregnancy time (p=0.5) or number of abortions (p=0.9). conclusions: pregnant women suffer more from lacrimal dysfunction than non pregnant women; in both groups the prevalence of tear dysfunction is more elevated in women with higher parity.