Subjective Satisfaction in Long-term Orthokeratology Patients

Abstract

Orthokeratology patients show an irregular wearing pattern after 1 year of treatment that has significant effects on the subjective visual performance over the next day of skipping lens wear. Light distortion under low-light conditions seems to be a transient complication of the treatment and most of the patients report an improvement after the first weeks of treatment.

Corneal Aberrations, Contrast Sensitivity, and Light Distortion in Orthokeratology Patients: 1-Year Results

“…Furthermore, neural adaptation mechanisms might play a significant role in adaptation to a deteriorated optical quality while preserving a good visual function. This ability to adaptation has been reported previously in the presence of HOA in human eyes [13, 39–41]. …”

“…However, we have reported in a recent study that the system is sensitive to the photic phenomena induced when we artificially incorporate different amounts and sign of HOA [18]. Although we cannot quantify each one of the photic phenomena, we consider that such effects are well reflected in the short-term measurements in this study and that adaptation takes place to reduce the size of the LD overtime in the middle [14] and longer term (present study), in agreement with transient subjective complaints expressed by the patient in the clinical setting [13]. On the other side, the lack of correlation between LD and CS values might be related to the fact that we did not use a glare source while measuring the CSF.…”

“…This is in agreement with the clinical observation of adaptation to the distortion effect. In a recent work we have observed that subjective reports of light distortions increase when treatment starts and decreases over the period of treatment [13]. …”

“…We have observed in a cross-sectional study that OK subjects report subjective complaints that are transient during the first days or weeks of treatment. Common complaints include perception of haloes and starburst around light sources, either in outdoor (i.e., car lights) or indoor conditions [13]. In a different study, we have quantified the amount of LD over the period of adaptation to OK treatment in a cohort of 29 subjects and observed that LD phenomena increase at the first day but decrease again towards baseline values after 30 days [14].…”

Optical changes and visual performance with orthokeratology

“…Zhao et al also reported higher vision‐related quality of life with orthokeratology compared to spectacles in myopic children with 75 per cent of the participants preferring orthokeratology to spectacles. Additional studies have reported subjective satisfaction with orthokeratology on a visual analogue scale, with participants rating vision as 7.8/10 in one study and 9.1/10 in another . These study results demonstrate that most patients using orthokeratology lenses are satisfied with the vision it provides.…”