Abstract
Purpose: :
To investigate the incidence of high order ocular aberrations (HOAs) in relationship with age, sex, race, and eye dominance pre– and post–LASIK.
Methods: :
Wavefront exams were uniformly randomly selected from 10 clinical studies in the United States and Canada. All 335 patients (635 eyes) had undergone LASIK for myopia, hyperopia, or presbyopia. Ages ranged from 21 to 65 (43±11). The cohort comprised 50.7% females and 49.3% males. The racial makeup of the cohort was 90.7% Caucasian, 7.8% unknown, 0.9% Black, and 0.6% Asian/Pacific. Pre– and post–Op wavefront maps were compared and analyzed. Exams with wavefront maps smaller than 5 mm were excluded. Maps larger than 5 mm were scaled to 5 mm for comparison purposes.
Results: :
No statistical difference in pre–and post op HOAs was found between male and female subjects or in HOAs between pre– and post–op dominant and non–dominant eyes. However, Asian subjects had statistically significantly more HOAs pre–operatively than non–Asian subjects. Study results were consistent with previous studies showing that HOAs increase with age in all populations. Post–operatively, HOAs gradually decreased over time in all subjects.
Conclusions: :
No significant differences in HOAs can be observed between male and female or dominant and non–dominant eyes. Statistically, pre–operative Asian eyes have more HOAs than pre–operative Caucasian eyes. HOAs increase with age in pre–operative eyes and gradually decrease in post–operative eyes over time.
Keywords: refractive surgery: LASIK • refractive surgery: comparative studies • refractive surgery: optical quality