This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
LASIK improves near, distance stereoacuity
Both near and distance stereoacuity demonstrated significant improvement after LASIK, researchers reported in a study recently published in Optometry & Vision Science.
Singh and colleagues also noted that stereoacuity was correlated with anisometropia, but not corrected refractive error.
Researchers conducted a prospective interventional study at a tertiary level eye care center in India.
In 80 eyes of 40 patients, stereoacuity was measured pre-LASIK with best spectacle correction and post-LASIK with unaided eye near and distance Randot tests. Both near and distance stereoacuity was measured in all patients. In order to participate, patients must have received LASIK for myopic correction and achieved an uncorrected visual acuity of 0.67 following the procedure.
"In the present study, both near stereoacuity and distance stereoacuity have shown significant improvement after LASIK and, in most cases, returned to normal levels," the authors said. "The findings of this study concur with a previous study where significant improvement in near stereoacuity was found after LASIK. However, distance stereoacuity has not been evaluated previously, and, in this study, distance stereoacuity was found to be more affected in the preoperative period with more cases having subnormal stereoacuity for distance than for near. This is consistent with previous literature that has shown distance stereoacuity to often be worse than 60 arcsec in the normal population.
They concluded: "LASIK improves both near and distance stereoacuity when compared with best spectacle correction in the preoperative period for moderate myopes. Stereoacuity is primarily affected by anisometropia and is independent of the amount of refractive error corrected."
Disclosure: The authors have no financial disclosures.