Angle Kappa is Not Correlated with Patient-Reported Outcomes After Multifocal Lens Implantation

To examine the effect of preoperative angle kappa on patient-reported outcomes after multifocal lens placement during cataract surgery and determine if it is an effective measure for preoperative patients screening for multifocal lens placement.

Private refractive surgery clinics.

Retrospective cohort study.

All patients undergoing bilateral cataract or refractive lens exchange surgery with a target of emmetropia between 2013 and 2017 at Optical Express (Glasgow, UK) with multifocal lens placement for whom preoperative angle kappa measurement and a postoperative month 1 patient-reported outcomes measures were available were included.

A total of 1368 patients were identified. Median preoperative angle kappa was 0.41mm with an interquartile range of 0.30mm to 0.53mm. Preoperative angle kappa did not have a significant association with patient-reported satisfaction with vision (correlation coefficient 0.15, 95% confidence interval -0.081 to 0.39, P = 0.20) nor with patient-reported photic phenomena (P > 0.09 for all comparisons). A receiver-operator characteristic analysis did not yield a viable cutoff predictive of patient-reported satisfaction.

Angle kappa was not predictive of patient-reported satisfaction in this study. This study did not find evidence that it should be used as a screening test for patients considering multifocal intraocular lens placement.