Abstract
Purpose :
To analyze the correlation between age, gender, refractive error, keratometry and corneal thickness in a large group of subjects.
Methods :
This study is a retrospective analysis of patients who underwent refractive surgery between January 2000 and February 2015 at Care Vision refractive clinic, Tel Aviv, Israel. Patient demographics, subjective refraction, pachymetry and average keratometry (AK) were collected.
Results :
Overall, 51,113 eyes of patients averaging 28.8 ± 9.3 years of which 53.9% were males were included. AK, spherical error, cylindrical error, and SE differed significantly between male and female subjects (p<0.001), while pachymetry did not (p=0.332). In myopic eyes, correlations between age, pachymetry, AK, spherical error, cylindrical error, and SE were all statistically significant except for the correlation between age and either pachymetry (p=0.462) or SE (p=0.016). All correlations found were negligible (clinically insignificant) or small (|r|=0.003 to 0.141). In hyperopic eyes, correlations between age, pachymetry, AK, spherical error, cylindrical error, and SE were all statistically significant except for the correlation between AK and either pachymetry or cylindrical error (p=0.344 or p=0.274, respectively). All correlations found were negligible or small, except for a moderate correlation found between age and either spherical or cylindrical error (r=-0.329 or r=0.365, respectively).
Conclusions :
This large data analysis described the correlations between refractive state, pachymetry and keratometry of refractive surgery candidates. More importantly, despite associations being statistically significant, most of them were of little clinical value. Future studies should put more emphasis on the clinical value when discussing such findings than on the statistical significance.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.