BIOMETRIC PARAMETERS, CORNEAL ASTIGMATISM AND OCULAR COMORBIDITY IN CATARACT SURGERY PATIENTS

 

Aistė Varoniukaitė¹, Laurita Vaičaitė¹, Loreta Kuzmienė²

1Faculty of Medicine, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania
2Department of Ophthalmology, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Evaluation of corneal astigmatism, biometric parameters and ocular comorbidities are of great importance before cataract surgery in order to plan and select intraocular lense and achieve the best postoperative visual function.

Aim: To evaluate biometric parameters, analyze the distribution and prevalence of magnitude, orientation and age-related changes of corneal astigmatism  as well as ocular comorbidity prevalence in cataract surgery patients.

Methods: The retrospective study included case histories of 422 patients (502 eyes) examined before cataract surgery. Data of demographics, biometric parameters, corneal astigmatism, visual acuity and ocular comorbidities were analyzed. P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: The mean age was 71.68 ± 9.77 y. The AL was 23.40 ± 1.36 mm and ACD was 3.01 ± 0.45 mm. Higher  AL and lower keratometry values were observed in male patients. The overall astigmatism was 0.80 ± 0.75 D. A significant correlation was determined between ACD and age, AL and, ACD and corneal astigmatism. The magnitude of astigmatism was > 1.0 D in 23.3% of cases. < 1.0 D corneal astigmatism magnitude was significantly more common in older patients. The most frequent orientation of corneal astigmatism was against-the-rule astigmatism (56.9%).  The rate of WTR astigmatism significantly decreased with the older age, while ATR and OB rate increased. Mean preoperative BCDVA was 0.31 ± 0.25 D. Ocular comorbidities were present in 48.6% of cases, with glaucoma being the most frequent one (31.3%).

Conclusions: almost a half of cataract surgery patients present ocular comorbidities and one-fifth have corneal astigmatism  > 1.0 D. The results are important to consider before surgery and analyze the demand of toric IOLs.

Keywords: corneal astigmatism, cataract surgery, biometric parameters, ocular comorbidity