Original article
Myopia in Adults with Retinopathy of Prematurity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2008.01.026Get rights and content

Purpose

To evaluate myopia in adults with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).

Design

Observational case series.

Methods

Axial length (AL), corneal radius (CR), and AL/CR ratio were measured in myopic adults with ROP using ultrasound A-scan biometry and keratometry, respectively.

Results

Twenty-five eyes of 18 patients (mean age, 48 years) were studied. Mean gestational age at birth was 29 weeks. The average refraction was −5.23 diopters, AL 24.43 mm, CR 7.45 mm, and AL/CR ratio 3.28. On average, myopic adults with ROP had a shorter AL and decreased CR (increased corneal curvature), but a similar AL/CR ratio, relative to adults with the same degree of myopia who were born full-term. Myopic adults with ROP also had increased lens thickness (LT) and shallow anterior chamber depth (ACD).

Conclusions

Myopic adults with ROP had a shorter AL and smaller CR than expected for their degree of myopia. However, AL/CR ratios for these patients were similar to the values of adults who were born full-term. These results suggest that the refractive element most responsible for myopia in adults with ROP is higher corneal curvature (decreased CR), whereas the predominant factor in adult myopic individuals who were born full-term is increased AL. We believe that increased LT and shallow ACD make a lesser contribution to myopia in adults with ROP.

Section snippets

Methods

Axial length, CR, AL/CR ratio, LT, and ACD were measured in myopic adults with ROP by using ultrasound biometry and keratometry, respectively. The relationship between degree of myopia and these refractive elements was analyzed to help identify the factors most responsible for the subjects' myopia. These findings were compared to measurements of adults with the same degree of myopia who were born full-term.

Data for 30 eyes of 22 patients with ROP were obtained. Patients who fulfilled the

Results

The study population consisted of 22 patients (age range, 21 to 59 years; mean, 48 years; median, 52 years). Of these 22 patients, six were men and 16 were women. Data were gathered on 30 eyes from these 22 patients. Most of these patients' eyes had spherical equivalent between −1.5 and −10 D; however, three eyes from three separate patients were outside this range (−11.8 D, −14.6 D, and −18.4 D). Since the myopic control group did not include patients with this degree of high myopia, data from

Discussion

Many authors have published conflicting evidence on the biometric cause of myopia in patients with ROP. From our review of the literature, all of these studies have looked at young children with ROP. These studies are limited given the difficulty of obtaining biometric and refractive values in children, which inevitably creates a source of error and leads to variability in results.14 To avoid this type of error and better understand the biometric measurements that are responsible for high

References (21)

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