Ocular biometrics in eyes with different white-to-white corneal diameter in young myopic adults

The interactions between white-to-white corneal diameter (WTW) and other ocular biometrics are important for planning of refractive surgery and understanding of ocular structural changes in myopia, but such interactions are rarely investigated in young myopic adults. This is a retrospective study involving 7893 young myopic adults from five centers. WTW and other ocular biometrics were measured by Pentacam. The ocular biometrics included anterior corneal curvature (AK) and posterior corneal curvature (PK), central corneal thickness (CCT) and corneal volume (CV), anterior and corneal eccentricity and asphericity, anterior corneal astigmatism (ACA) and posterior corneal astigmatism, anterior chamber depth (ACD), and anterior chamber volume (ACV). The ocular biometrics were compared among eyes of different WTW quartiles. Multivariate linear regression was used to assess the linear associations between WTW and other ocular biometrics adjusting for age, gender and spherical equivalent. In eyes of different WTW quartiles, other ocular biometrics were also significantly different (all P < 0.05). After adjusting for age, gender and spherical equivalent, WTW was positively correlated to AK (β = 0.26 to 0.29), ACA (β = 0.13), anterior corneal asphericity (β = 0.05), PK (β = 0.33 to 0.34), posterior corneal asphericity (β = 0.13), ACD (β = 0.29), and ACV (β = 40.69), and was negatively correlated to CCT (β = - 6.83), CV (β = - 0.06 to - 0.78), anterior corneal eccentricity (β = - 0.035), and posterior corneal eccentricity (β = - 0.14) (all P < 0.001). In conclusion, we found that in young myopic adults, larger WTW was associated with thinner corneal thickness, flatter corneal curvature, more anterior corneal toricity, less corneal eccentricity and asphericity, and broader anterior chamber. Our findings may fill in the gap of literature, and help us better understand how the anterior segment structures interact with the WTW in myopia.