Abstract
Purpose :
Presbyopia often results in contact lens discontinuation despite, perhaps, a patient’s desire to maintain habitual contact lens wear. This prospective survey study aimed to determine the vision correction preferences (spectacles versus contact lenses) of non-presbyopes and presbyopes and how refractive error is related to these preferences.
Methods :
Subjects were recruited from the general public at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Adult COSI visitors (ages 18 to 76 years) who reported wearing glasses or contact lenses completed a survey that asked about their opinions and preferences related to refractive correction. After survey completion, subjects removed their habitual refractive correction, and autorefraction was performed on both eyes.
Results :
Of the 304 total subjects, 38.2% (116/304) were presbyopic. Most of the sample was female (59.2%, 180/304). Spectacles were the primary vision correction for 78.0% (237/304) of subjects. The proportion of presbyopes was higher (p = 0.006, X2= 7.4) in the spectacle group (42.2%, 100/237) compared to the contact lens wearing group (23.9%, 16/67). For spectacles wearers of all ages who had tried contact lenses, 61.0% (75/123) would prefer to wear contact lenses if good vision and comfort could be achieved, and the percent of subjects reporting this preference was not different for presbyopes versus non-presbyopes (p = 0.2, X2 = 1.6). In the overall sample, contact lens wearers were more myopic (p < 0.001, OR = 0.7) and had less astigmatism (p = 0.04, OR = 1.9) than spectacle wearers. Within the contact lens wearing group, there was no significant difference in refractive error (spherical power p = 0.5, OR = 1.5; astigmatism p = 0.9, OR = 1.5; anisometropia p = 0.5, OR = 0.5) between presbyopes and non-presbyopes. Overall, contact lens wearers were more likely to be female (p = 0.004, X2 = 8.5), but there was no difference in gender in presbyopic and non-presbyopic contact lens wearers (p = 0.5, X2 = 0.5).
Conclusions :
For patients who have tried contact lenses, presbyopes would prefer contact lens correction as often as non-presbyopes. When considering vision correction options, eye care practitioners should not allow presbyopic status or gender to influence their decision to trial contact lenses with a patient.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.