Accommodative facility in myopes and non-myopes at Mechi Netra (Eye Hospital) at Jhapa district, Eastern Nepal

Abstract

Objective: Many studies have shown that the myopes have abnormal accommodative characteristics. This study aimed at measuring the accommodative facility of myopes and non-myopes and compare between them. Method: Distance and near accommodative facility in cycles per minute(cpm) were measured using ±2 D flippers. 100 patients (50 myopes and 50 non-myopes) aged between 15-25 years were taken as the research participants visited in OPD of Mechi Netralaya and Ophthalmic Research Centre, of Mechinagar-6, Jhapa. Only the right eye data was considered for the analysis. Difference between the groups were analyzed with the ANOVA (Brown-Forsythe F Test). Findings: This Mean distance facility was significantly lower (5.3 ± 2.8 cpm) in the myopic group compared with the mean distance facility in the non-myopic group (8.7 ± 3.1 cpm). Mean near facility was also significantly lower (4.3 ± 1.8 cpm) in the myopic group compared with the mean near facility in the non-myopic group (6.6 ± 2.4 cpm). But, both distance and near Accommodative facility was not significantly different among the age groups. The area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC curve) for distance facility was 0.784 (P <0.001, 95% CI, 0.696–0.87), suggesting that distance cpm had only a fair ability to discriminate between myopic and non-myopic eyes. Hence, the accommodative facility cannot be used as a stand-alone discriminatory test to predict myopia. Conclusions: There was no any difference in the accommodative facility between age group. Myopic eyes have reduced accommodation facility at both distance and near. However, accommodative facility as a test does not have sufficient power to distinguish eyes with myopes and non-myopes of age between 15-25 years.