Abstract
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between age and amplitude of accommodation in a Swedish population and also to investigate the age of onset of Presbyopia in this population.
Methods:
All the measurements were performed in a Eye Clinic in Sweden. Subjects living in and around southern part of Sweden were recruited for this study. All the subjects had at least 20/20 best corrected visual acuity and normal binocular vision. The sample size was 103 subjects aged between 9 and 68 years. The amplitude of accommodation was measured using the push-up and the push-down method with a Royal Air Force (RAF) ruler. The ruler has both a metric scale in centimeters and a dioptric scale. The subjects were asked to read letters of N5 print size and report first sustained blur in push-up method and first sustained clear in push-down method. The subjects had their best correction in place during the measurements. All the measurements were done both monocularly (Right eye-OD and Left eye-OS) and binocularly (OU).
Results:
Regression analysis showed a significant decrease in the amplitude of accommodation with age (p < 0.05). Age of onset of presbyopia (less than 5 D amplitude) was 39 and 41 years based on monocular and binocular values respectively in this sample. There was no significant difference in the amplitude values between OD and OS (p > 0.05). Binocular amplitude values were higher than monocular values. There was a significant difference between push-up and push-down values (p < 0.05). Compared to Hofstetter's results, this study showed lower values than expected.
Conclusions:
Amplitude of accommodation decreased with age as suggested by previous studies. At the age of 54 years, the amplitude reached around 0.85 D and remained constant after that. Age of onset of presbyopia in this Swedish population was similar to other European population.