Crowded logMAR acuity is arguably the gold-standard visual acuity measure in adults and is rapidly becoming so in children, especially with the recalibration (www.lea-test.fi/; available at no charge) of the Lea symbol chart
10 to the international standard, the Landolt-C chart.
4 5 Although advances in standardizing the optotype acuity measurement procedure have been made in adults,
3 4 35 these have been comparatively few in the pediatric age group. Repeatability statistics for crowded logMAR acuity in the pediatric age group have been reported in some studies,
1 2 8 9 10 11 23 24 25 26 27 but in only two of these
2 25 was optical defocus controlled. Manny et al.
25 assessed only normal myopic children
(Table 2)and Moke et al.
2 included amblyopes with acuities ≤0.4 logMAR. In the present study and that of Moke et al.,
2 both normal subjects and amblyopes were assessed, with no difference found in repeatability between these two groups. In addition, we and Moke et al.
2 (as well as Holmes et al.,
1 in which optical defocus was not reported as uniformly controlled
1 ), found that, in 93% of cases, test and retest thresholds lay within ±0.10 logMAR. This study and the other two (Moke et al.
2 and Holmes et al.
1 ) used line-by-line scoring.
The line-by-line scoring system is favored by clinicians
6 15 and approved by authoritative bodies.
4 5 The system used in this study would necessarily increase the 95% LOA,
12 13 14 but our results and those of others
1 2 indicate that the method is capable of detecting acuity differences of greater than 0.10 logMAR (±5 symbols). If constrained to reporting the 95% LOA, however, the repeatability increases to ±0.18 logMAR on average (maximum, ±0.19) as predicted
12 13 14 but still not dissimilar to most other reports,
1 2 25 including those using interpolated scoring
(Table 2) . This is consistent with modeling experiments comparing these two types of termination rules that suggest that differences between the two are small.
15
In practical terms, when using line-by-line scoring, however, a 95% LOA of ±0.18 would effectively amount to a threshold for detecting a real difference of 2 lines, and in our sample 100% of test and retest scores lay within ±0.2 logMAR—generally the accepted threshold for the detection of amblyopia and better than the interocular difference threshold specified in a recent large amblyopia study.
36
Despite their use of the interpolated scoring method, the reported 95% LOA in Kheterpal et al.
23 are actually greater than those reported by us
(Table 2) . This most likely reflects the smaller study group and possibly also the effect of optical defocus.
16 17 18 Whether the careful control of optical defocus affected our results and those of Moke et al.
2 is unclear, since Holmes et al.
1 reported similar results in a group of children in which the refractive status of the normal subjects was not specified. Unfortunately, recalculation of our data using the interpolated scoring system is not possible, because the study criteria recorded only line-by-line thresholds from the outset.
Our analysis failed to identify any statistically significant difference in the magnitude of threshold differences between test and retest of the normal and the amblyopic groups. This result is in keeping with those in previous reports in both adult and pediatric groups, which showed either no statistically significant difference in repeatability
1 2 14 21 between normal and abnormal groups or, if a difference was found (±0.02 logMAR greater test–retest variability in cataract patients than normal),
16 it was not clinically meaningful.
The adequacy of masking in the single observer, single-session data collection design of this study is a possible source of bias. In young pediatric age groups, cooperation is notoriously fickle, and in this study, intervals between acuity thresholds were occupied by conducting other orthoptic assessments rather than allowing the child to leave the examination room for non–clinic-related activity. It was decided also to collect test and retest data within the same session, because there is a high nonattendance rate (24.76% in the research clinic, 19.66% in the nonresearch clinic), thereby reducing the total number of visits required. Despite this, no significant difference was detected between the magnitude of improvement versus disimprovement (P = 0.13) for the entire group of eyes in which a change in threshold occurred (n = 48). A further argument against the possibility of bias in this report is related to a crucial finding in the work (i.e., the magnitude of repeatability is similar across three classes of eyes: normal, fellow, amblyopic). To have achieved this result, one would have had to inflate or deflate or adjust the bias systematically, depending on the group being tested at the time. We did not make such adjustments.
The Lea symbol chart has been shown to have testability superior to that of the HOTV test,
10 28 but the question of its reliability, particularly in amblyopic children and also under conditions of appropriate optical correction has been investigated in this study. We have now shown that the Lea symbol chart, scored using a line-by-line method, produces test–retest reliability that is comparable to the HOTV test scored by the same method,
1 2 and reliability that is comparable to other reports
23 25 in which interpolated scoring was used. Thus, a degree of accuracy comparable to that of the HOTV design can be obtained with a test that has been shown to have superior testability in children. Best corrected acuity scores were measured throughout this study, and therefore the effect of optical defocus on repeatability was not measured, but there is no reason to suspect that it would be any less than that reported by Rosser et al.
18 in normal adults. There appeared to be no clinically meaningful difference in repeatability between the normal and amblyopic children tested in this study.