Abstract
Purpose:
To compare the retinal sensibility of the peripheral visual field between professional soccer players and age-gender matched non athletes.
Methods:
The study group comprised 29 male (mean age, 26.0 ± 3.2 years) professional soccer players and the control group included 26 age matched non athlete men. All of the participants underwent a complete eye examination and visual field analysis with the Humphrey visual field (program 60-4 SITA). The binocular visual field analysis was derived using the best location model. This prediction model is based on the highest sensitivity between eyes at each visual field location integrating the corresponding visual field quadrants of each eye, resulting in a unique integrated visual field. Each visual field was divided into four quadrants (left superior, right superior, left inferior, and right inferior) and the mean retinal sensitivity was compared between the groups.
Results:
The mean retinal sensitivity in the right inferior (27.1 ± 1.4 dB) and the left (27.3 ± 1.2 dB) quadrants was higher in the soccer players as compared to non-athletes (25.6 ± 2.1 dB and 26.1 ± 1.2 dB, respectively; P = 0.011 e P = 0.004).
Conclusions:
The results of this study demonstrated that soccer players have higher retina sensibility in the inferior visual field than non-athletes. This observation may possibly be related to the sport activity.
Keywords: 758 visual fields •
760 visual search