ABSTRACT

Purpose:

To evaluate the effects of different lens designs on visual quality among soft spherical contact lens users.

Material and Method:

Forty eyes of twenty patients from our contact lens unit were included in this study. Refractive errors of the patients were between -0.50 and -6.0 diopters with <0.75 diopters of astigmatism. Patients wore aspherical designed Balafilcon A (Purevision- Bausch and Lomb) and spherical designed Senofilcon A (Acuvue Oasys- Johnson and Johnson) in a random order. We recorded and compared the visual acuity with Snellen chart, contrast sensitivity values with Bailey-Lovie chart in letters, mean root mean square (rms) of corneal aberration values measured by Nidek Magellan Mapper for each eye of all patients with contact lenses on and off and with glasses.

Results:

Mean age of the patients included in the study was 24.55 (±4.63) years. 85% (n=17) of patients were female and 15%(n=3) were male. Best-corrected visual acuity was 1.0 (10/10) lines with both glasses and contact lenses. During low contrast sensitivity measurements, we observed 4-5 letters of mean increase with both contact lenses compared to glasses. We did not observe significant difference of contrast sensitivity between spheric and aspheric contact lenses (p>0.05). Total higher order aberration mean rms value was 0.29±0.10 µm without glasses, while it was 0.33±0.10 µm with Balafilcon A lenses and 0.31±0.10 µm with Senofilcon A lenses. Higher order aberration values measured after contact lens application did not show a significant difference for two contact lens designs (p>0.05).

Discussion:

High and low contrast sensitivity values were better with spectacles compared to contact lenses. We did not observe significant difference in higher order aberration values and visual quality between aspheric and spheric designed lenses.