Association between ocular dominance and refraction

To investigate the association between ocular dominance and refraction.

A retrospective study of the cycloplegic refraction of 2453 consecutive patients with a mean age of 46 +/- 12 years (range: 18 to 79 years) was performed. One thousand one hundred fifty-seven (47%) patients were men and 1296 (53%) were women. Patients who had previous eye surgery, ocular disease, or > 2 lines of best spectacle-corrected visual acuity (BSCVA) difference between eyes were excluded. Motor ocular dominance was determined using the hole-in-the-card test.

The right and left eyes were dominant in 67% (1650) and 33% (803) of patients, respectively. Males had a higher right eye dominance (70%) than females (65%) (P = .0168) with a mean cycloplegic spherical equivalent refracton (SE) of -2.12 diopters (D) and -2.38 D, respectively. This higher rate of right eye dominance in males was seen at all levels of SE refractive error. Mean BSCVA was 20/19 in both right and left eyes (P>.05) with a mean SE of -2.25 +/- 3.63 D and -2.26 +/- 3.66 D in the right and left eyes, respectively. Neither mean SE difference nor BSCVA difference between eyes was found to correlate with motor eye dominance.

Gender appears to be a factor when testing ocular dominance but not SE refractive error. The hole-in-the-card dominance test is a method that is easy to perform for both patients and clinicians.