Has Snellen's chart lost the battle in cataract surgery visual acuity evaluation?

Session Details

Session Title: Moderated Poster Session: Cataract
Session Date/Time: Friday 09/02/2018 | 14:00-15:00
Paper Time: 14:24
Venue: Poster Area


First Author: S.Petrovic Pajic SLOVENIA
Co Author(s): T. Petrovic  M. Stojkovic              

Abstract Details

Purpose:

This study was designed to explore the practical differences between visual acuity scores measured on Snellen versus ETDRS charts, to grade the cataracts using LOCS III system and to compare visual acuity on both charts dependig on catarct grade and type.

Setting:

Study was carried out on the Clinic for eye diseases, Clinical Center of Serbia, during the period of two years.

Methods:

Prospective, consecutive evaluation of uncorrected and best corrected visual acuity was performed on the eye scheduled for cataract surgery preoperative and postoperatively by the same experienced ophthalmologist. 540 patients met the inclusion criteria and were subjected to testing, surgery, data collection and analysis.

Results:

Mean visual acuity score was better on ETDRS than on Snellen chart. Mean difference was 6.05 letters or 1.21 lines. Visual acuity results correlate with all types of cataract, regardless of the chart used, with the highest statistical significance (P<0, 0001) for the subcapsular cataract.

Conclusions:

The ETDRS chart is more discriminative and precise than Snellen especially for poor visual acuities. Correlation between two charts is good, so it is possible for everyday clinical practice to roughly predict results of the VA on the one scale based on the results of the other. Due to statistically significant difference in measured visual acuity as our study has shown, it is recommended to test visual acuity of the cataract surgery patients on the ETDRS especially in the case of the posterior subcapsular cataract.

Financial Disclosure:

None