Refractive growth variability in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study.

Purpose: Prediction of refraction after cataract surgery in children is limited by the variance in rate of refractive growth (RRG3). This study compared RRG3 in aphakic and pseudophakic eyes with their fellow, normal eyes in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study. Setting: Twelve clinical sites in the United States. Design: Randomized clinical trial. Methods: Infants randomized to unilateral cataract extraction had RRG3 calculated based on biometric data (axial length and keratometry) at cataract surgery and at 10 years of age, for both the normal and cataract eyes. Subjects were included if complete biometric data from both eyes were available both at surgery and at 10 years. Variance in RRG3 was compared between the groups with Pitman test for equality of variance between correlated samples. Results: Longitudinal biometric data were available for 103 of the 114 patients enrolled. RRG3 was -15.00 diopters (D) (3.00 D) for normal eyes (reported as mean [SD]), -17.70 D (6.20 D) for aphakic eyes, and -16.70 D (6.20 D) for pseudophakic eyes (P <.0001 for comparison of variances in RRG3 between normal and all operated eyes). Further analysis found differences in the variance in axial length growth (P <.0001) between operated and normal eyes; the variance in keratometry measurement change did not reach significance. Conclusions: The standard deviation in the RRG3 of normal eyes in our study was half of that found in eyes that underwent cataract surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]