A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NONCYCLOPLEGIC REFRACTIVE ERROR VALUES WITH CYCLOPLEGIC REFRACTIVE ERROR VALUES

Abstract

Background: Refractive errors are an important common cause of visual disturbance worldwide. Symptoms related to refractive errors are quite disturbing and may even disrupt the normal lifestyle of individuals. The evaluation of these patients can be occasionally aided by topical agents called cycloplegic drugs. Thus refraction can be broadly divided into cycloplegic and noncycloplegic refraction. Cycloplegic drugs are often used to evaluate patients for underlying refractive errors. Cycloplegics cause temporary paralysis of ciliary muscles allowing the determination of total refractive errors. Noncycloplegic refraction is performed without any drug administration. It doesn't affect the accommodation and pupil dilatation. The various listed methods of non-cycloplegic refraction are retinoscopy, autorefraction, and objective and subjective refraction.
Materials and methods: This is a prospective and single center study was conducted in Department of ophthalmology, Dr. VRK Women's Medical College, Teaching Hospital & Research Center, Hyderabad over a period of 1 year. Patients who were in the age group of 6 years above and less than 35 years with defects in vision were included in the study. History was collected from all patients and using snellen’s chart, distant visual acuity was assessed at a distance of 6 meters & near visual acuity was assessed by using jaegers chart by placing at a distance of 25 cms.
Result: In our study included 48.9% of males and 51.1% female patients, with maximum patients 30 (33.3%) in age group of 16-20years. Comparison of pre & post cycloplegic values of Auto-refractometer values in 23 & 24 right and left eyes of hypermetropia patients respectively, there was a significant increase in number of patient from dioptric range (+0.25 to +1.25) to (+2.75 to +3.75), which was 12 to 28 and 20 to 31 right and left eyes respectively, with (pvalue= 0.0001) in right eye and (p-value = <0.001) in left eyes, which is significant. There was no significant shift in number of patients pre and post dilation in both eyes of patients of myopic
astigmatism, with (p-value = 0.6484) and (p-value = 0.3868) for right and left eyes respectively, which are not significant

Conclusion: Measurement of refractive error is influenced by accommodation in younger patients. Hypermetropia is underestimated and myopia is overestimated without cycloplegic refraction using autorefractometer. Post cycloplegic autorefractometer values were accepted by
all patients and without any complications with good visual acuity.