Increased peripheral spherical aberrations are present in patients with negative dysphotopsia

Session Details

Session Title: Biometry & Quality of Vision

Session Date/Time: Tuesday 25/09/2018 | 08:00-10:30

Paper Time: 09:42

Venue: Room A2

First Author: : J.Beenakker THE NETHERLANDS

Co Author(s): :    L. van Vught   Y. Cheng   G. Luyten              

Abstract Details

Purpose:

Negative Dysphotopsia (ND), which is characterised as a dark shadow in the temporal visual field, is a relative common side-effect after an otherwise uneventful cataract surgery. Although different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origin of this condition, no conclusive evidence has been given. As a result, there is no effective treatment for ND. In this study, the peripheral aberrations of pseudophakic subjects with and without ND are compared in order to provide a first objective assessment on the optical characteristics of ND.

Setting:

Department of Ophthalmology, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden, the The Netherlands

Methods:

Central and peripheral wavefront aberrations were measured along the horizontal meridian up to 30 degrees eccentricity for 15 ND patients and 15 pseudophakic controls using a peripheral wavefront scanner. The measured Hartmann-Shack images were analysed using a 3mm pupil. For both the central and peripheral visual field the defocus, astigmatism and spherical aberrations were compared between both groups.

Results:

No significant differences either centrally and peripherally were found between both groups in terms of defocus (on average below 1 Dioptre) and astigmatism (on average -1 Dioptre centrally increasing to -5 Dioptres at 30 degrees eccentricity). The average spherical aberrations were similar centrally, controls:0.01um(SD:0.03um); ND:0.01um(SD:0.04um), and at 30 degrees temporally, controls:-0.01um(SD:0.02um); ND:0.05µm(SD:0.06um). For the controls the absolute value of the spherical aberrations are relatively constant at all eccentricities: 0.02um(SD:0.03um). For the ND patients, however, the absolute value of the spherical aberrations are centrally about twice as high compared to controls: 0.04um(SD:0.03um) and increase to 0.06um(SD:0.03um) at 30degrees eccentricity.

Conclusions:

Although the presented data only evaluate the subjects’ aberrations up to 30 degrees eccentricity, they already show a clear optical difference between pseudophakic subjects with and without ND. ND patients show a higher spherical aberration than controls, and this difference increases with increasing eccentricity. This increase in spherical aberration is therefore expected to be even higher at the eccentricities where the ND is experienced. Further evaluations are needed to assess the effect of these aberrations and whether they can explain the temporal vision loss.

Financial Disclosure:

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