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Researchers link gender to ocular dominance
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Because men have a higher rate of right eye dominance than women, it appears that gender may be a factor when performing ocular dominance testing, a retrospective study found. However, spherical equivalent refractive error does not appear to be an influence when testing ocular dominance.
Ilker Eser, MD, and colleagues studied the cycloplegic refraction and ocular dominance of 2,453 refractive surgery patients who had not undergone previous ocular surgery. Specifically, 1,157 (47%) of these patients were men and 1,296 (53%) were women.
Patients averaged 46 years of age, ranging from 18 to 79 years.
Overall, 1,650 patients (67%) were right eye dominant and 803 patients (33%) were left eye dominant, the authors noted.
The investigators identified a statistically significantly greater rate of right eye dominance in men (70%) than in women (65%) that was evident at all levels of spherical equivalent refractive error (P = .0168).
Cycloplegic spherical equivalent refraction averaged –2.12 D in men and –2.38 D in women, they noted.
Best corrected visual acuity averaged 20/19 in both right and left eyes (P > .05), and spherical equivalent refraction averaged –2.25 D in right eyes and –2.26 D in left eyes.
"Neither mean [spherical equivalent] difference nor [BCVA] difference between eyes was found to correlate with motor eye dominance," the study authors said in the September issue of Journal of Refractive Surgery.