Relation of symptoms to accommodative infacility of school-aged children

Conventional optometric wisdom holds that accommodative infacility may result in asthenopic symptoms, yet the literature contains little support for this belief. We determined whether failure to achieve 8 cycles per minute of binocular accommodative facility or 11 cycles per minute of monocular accommodative facility tends to be associated with symptoms. Sixty subjects were given questionnaires to determine whether they were symptomatic. Monocular and binocular accommodative rock using plus and minus 2 D lenses was performed. Statistical analysis indicates that symptomatic subjects performed significantly poorer than asymptomatic subjects on both monocular and binocular facility tests. Patients presenting with asthenopic symptoms should therefore be tested for accommodative infacility.