Measuring the heterophoria: Agreement between two methods in non-presbyopic and presbyopic patients

To establish whether the cover test and von Graefe methods are interchangeable in a non-presbyopic and presbyopic population.

We performed a prospective study on a sample of 127 non-presbyopic subjects between 20 and 45 years old and 56 presbyopic between 40 and 78 years old. Distance and near vision phoria were measured using the von Graefe method (VG) and cover test (CT). We analyzed the significant differences between methods, their correlation and the agreement between them using the Bland and Altman method.

For distance vision, heterophoria values for non-presbyopic subjects were -0.61±1.86Δ with CT and -0.88±2.37Δ with VG, and for presbyopic subjects were -0.56±1.64Δ with CT and -0.85±1.94Δ with VG. For near vision, CT yielded -3.02±3.97Δ, while VG achieved -3.49±4.70Δ in non-presbyopic subjects. For presbyopic subjects these values were -6.05±4.38Δ with CT and -6.29±4.19Δ with VG, respectively. Statistically significant differences between the two methods were observed for all groups analyzed (p<0.05), except for near vision in presbyopic subjects (p>0.05). Coefficient of agreement for non-presbyopic was ±2.97Δ for distance vision and ±6.74Δ at near. For presbyopic patients, this coefficient was ±1.59Δ for distance and ±1.86Δ for near vision.

Cover test and von Graefe methods have a high level of agreement for both distance and near vision when considering presbyopic subjects. For non-presbyopic patients, the level of agreement is very low. Both methods for measuring heterophoria can only be considered interchangeable for presbyopic patients. For clinical purposes, this implies that any method can be used for measuring heterophoria in presbyopic patients.