Assessment of dry eye after LASIK by real‐time measurement of higher order aberrations variation.

Purpose To evaluate tear break‐up time (BUT) with real‐time (RT) higher order wavefront aberrations (HOA) measurements in myopic patients after Laser‐Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis (LASIK) surgery. Methods HOA up to the sixth order for a 4‐mm pupil were measured in 20 normal subjects (Group 1) and in 20 myopic patients, with no history of dry eye (DE), before and after LASIK surgery (Group 2), using the IRX3 (Imagine Eyes, Orsay, France) Hartmann‐Shack (H‐S) aberrometer. The HOA measurements were performed (in triplicate) with a new dedicated software, once every second for up to 20 seconds. HOA variations were compared with the BUT by the conventional fluorescein method (CFM). Results Twenty percent of the patients from Group 2 were complaining from DE symptoms. There was an excellent correlation between the HOA variation and the BUT recorded by the CFM in both groups. Reproducibility of the HOA measurements in all subjects and patients was excellent. BUT was significantly decreased (P<0.005) in 30% of the patients in Group 2 when compared to the normal tests subjects (Group 1). Conclusion HS aberrometry is a non invasive method that has been used for the last decade for the assessment of the quality of vision, in patients undergoing refractive surgery and cataract or clear lens extraction. Studying the HOA variation is a new interesting method for evaluating both the quality vision and the BUT in patients after LASIK surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]