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Post-LASIK UCVA strongly associated with patient satisfaction

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The uncorrected visual acuity achieved after LASIK strongly predicts patient satisfaction with the surgery, a survey found. In addition, larger scotopic pupil diameters correlated with higher satisfaction and distance vision, although it did not reach significance, the authors noted.

Gregory W. Schmidt, MD, and colleagues investigated the relationship between ablation diameter, pupil size and visual function in 97 LASIK patients who averaged 43.7 years of age. These patients had responded by mail to the National Eye Institute Refractive Error Quality of Life (RQL) Instrument questionnaire, which was sent to 300 eligible patients, according to the study.

At 3 months postop, 95.8% of respondents had UCVA of at least 20/40 in their better eye. Also at 3 months, 74.4% of patients' worse eyes were within 1 D of emmetropia and 96.3% were within 2 D of emmetropia, the authors reported.

Regarding visual symptoms, 76 patients (78.4%) reported either little or no glare at night. Also, most patients reported excellent visual clarity — 50 patients (52.1%) reported perfectly clear vision and 40 patients (41.7%) reported nearly clear vision, according to the study.

Responses to the RQL questionnaire showed that 81 patients (83.5%) were either completely or very satisfied with their LASIK outcomes. Postoperatively, 68 patients (70.1%) reported that they either never or rarely worry about their vision and 18 patients (18.6%) reported only occasional worry, according to the study.

"Contrary to the notion that larger scotopic and mesopic pupil diameter is correlated with lower satisfaction, the correlations between mesopic and scotopic pupil diameter and the RQL satisfaction score were 0.12 and 0.19, respectively, indicating greater satisfaction with larger pupil diameter; however, neither association was statistically significant," the authors said.

As postoperative UCVA in the better eye improved, patients reported significantly less worry, more satisfaction, clearer vision and better far vision, according to the respective RQL subscale scores, the authors reported.

"There was a significant association between better eye UCVA and RQL satisfaction scores, which serves to confirm postoperative UCVA as a strong predictor of patient satisfaction after refractive surgery," they said.

The study is published in the August issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.