The effect of Lasik surgery on myopic anisometropes\u2019 sensory eye dominance

Lixia Feng,Robert F Hess,Huimin Lin,Jiafeng Wang,Rongfeng Liao,Yonghua Wang,Jiawei Zhou,Yao Chen

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-03553-8

Abstract

Lasik is a common surgery for treating anisometropia. In this study, we asked a specific question: what’s the effect of Lasik surgery on anisometropes’ sensory eye dominance? Fifteen myopic anisometropes (mean age: 23 ± 6.9 years old; 6 females) participated in our experiment. We quantitatively measured participants’ sensory eye dominance before and after the Lasik surgery using a binocular phase combination paradigm. We found no significant change of sensory eye dominance within 16 weeks (measured between 8 to 96 days, for one or two repetitions) after the surgery (t(14) = −1.44, p = 0.17). A further following on eight patients showed that patients’ two eyes were much more balanced at 16 weeks or more (measured one or two times between 112 to 408 days) after the surgery (t(7) = −3.79, p = 0.007). Our results suggest that the benefit of Lasik surgery on anisometropes’ sensory eye dominance is not immediate, a long-term ‘adaptation’ period (16 weeks or more) is necessary to enable the surgery to be truly effective.

Highlights

Myopia is a common prevalent disorder, such a problem is pronounced[1] and affecting up to 90% of teenagers and young adults in China[2]
Zhou et al.[10] showed that patients who are corrected for myopic anisometropia have abnormal sensory eye dominance, but that this improves during 16 or more weeks of refractive adaptation
Their results suggest that refractive adaptation may play a critical role in partially restoring the sensory eye balance in corrected anisometropes

Summary

Introduction

Myopia is a common prevalent disorder, such a problem is pronounced[1] and affecting up to 90% of teenagers and young adults in China[2]. Zhou et al.[10] showed that patients who are corrected for myopic anisometropia have abnormal sensory eye dominance, but that this improves during 16 or more weeks of refractive adaptation. Their results suggest that refractive adaptation may play a critical role in partially restoring the sensory eye balance in corrected anisometropes. In spite of many previous studies in anisometropia and binocularity, to our knowledge, there is no direct information on how sensory eye balance is affected after LASIK surgery. We conducted a cohort study to quantitatively evaluate the postoperative effect of LASIK surgery on myopic anisometropes’ sensory eye dominance

Methods

Results

Conclusion