Higher Order Aberrations (HOA) Changes after Femto-LASIK in Topography and Wavefrontguided Treatments

Publications have focused on comparing the effect of various methods of refractive surgery or ablation profiles on higher order aberrations (HOA), yet the effect of WG compared to TG ablation in femtosecond laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis femto-LASIK on HOAs has not been studied adequately.

We reviewed the changes of HOAs before and after femto-LASIK for simple myopia or compound myopic astigmatism after topography-guided (TG) and wavefront-guided (WG) ablation profiles. In this retrospective study, 42 eyes underwent TG and 31 WG femto-LASIK.

The total HOAs increased from 0.41±0.16 μm pre-operatively to 0.66±0.30 μm post-operatively in the TG group and from 0.42±0.13 μm pre-operatively to 0.59±0.27 μm post-operatively in the WG group without statistically significant difference between the two groups. However, the postoperative change of secondary astigmatism showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups [0.20 (0.0-0.53) vs. 0.0 (0.0-0.20) for TG and WG groups, respectively; p=0.009].

The total HOAs increased compared to pre-operative data, in both the TG and WG ablation profile groups. The extent of increase of secondary astigmatism was significantly lower in the WG group, which might favour the postoperative quality of vision.