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Soft contact lens wear significantly influences peripheral vision
Variations in all RMS values between naked eyes and eyes fitted with lenses were shown to be statistically significant.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Soft contact lens wear changed off-axis wavefront aberrations in eyes fitted with lenses compared with naked eyes, according to a poster presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting here.
“While considerable attention has been [paid] in recent years to aberrations associated with foveal vision, relatively little interest has been shown in the aberrations for peripheral vision,” Asaki Suzaki, MD, and colleagues said in the poster abstract.
The authors noted a lack of data summarizing off-axis optical properties of eyes fitted with soft contact lenses.
“Although it is likely that soft contact lens is effective against the off-axis aberration correction of the eye, few reports are available on off-axis optical characteristics of the eye with soft contact lenses. In this study, we investigated the off-axis wavefront aberrations of the eye with [a soft contact lens],” they said.
Patients and methods
The study included 30 eyes of 15 patients fitted with spherical soft contact lenses with powers of plano, –3 D and –7 D. Patients underwent analysis of wavefront aberrations with a wavefront analyzer.
Patients were directed to fixate on five points on an inner fixation target: center and 4.5° off-axis upward, downward, rightward and leftward.
Investigators used normalized Zernike polynomials to analyze wavefront aberrations to the sixth order across a 6-mm diameter area of the pupil center. They calculated differences between off-axis values and central fixation values for the root mean square (RMS) of each Zernike coefficient.
Results
Study data showed that the differences in RMS values of vertical coma between upward and downward fixation in naked eyes were 0.062 µm and –0.071 µm, respectively. Differences in eyes fitted with contact lenses were 0.070 µm and –0.124 µm at 0 D, 0.009 µm and 0.004 µm at –3 D, and –0.146 µm and –0.086 µm at –7 D with off-axis upward and downward gaze, respectively.
RMS value of horizontal coma in naked eyes was 0.060 µm and –0.056 µm at off-axis left-side and right-side gaze, respectively. The RMS values of horizontal coma in eyes fitted with contact lenses were 0.054 µm and –0.096 µm at 0 D, –0.027 µm and 0.038 µm at –3 D, and –0.040 µm and 0.038 µm at –7 D at off-axis left-side and right-side gaze, respectively, the researchers reported.
Study data showed that variations in all RMS values between naked eyes and fitted eyes were statistically significant (P < .05). “Off-axis wavefront aberrations in the eye were altered by wearing soft contact lenses,” the authors wrote. – by Matt Hasson
- Asaki Suzaki, MD, can be reached at Department of Applied Visual Science, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, 2-2 Yamadaoka Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan; 81-6-6879-3941; 81-6-6879-3948; e-mail: asuzaki4818@gmail.com.