Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology
Open Access

Abstract

The Association between Ocular Dominance and Refractive Errors in Chinese Myopic Subjects

Li Yuan, Bo Wan, Yanling He and Yongzhen Bao

Background: To determine the association between ocular dominance and myopic anisometropia in Chinese myopic subjects. This relevance would facilitate to identify the ocular dominance in bilateral cataract patients. Design: Retrospectively case study. Participants: 1503 Chinese myopic subjects, mean age 27 years, who were candidates for corneal myopic refractive surgery were reviewed between 2011 and 2012. Methods: The ocular dominance was determined by the hole-in-the-card test. The associations between ocular dominance laterality and refractive characters, including the sphere, cylinder, spherical and astigmatic anisometropia, were analyzed. Main outcome measures: Ocular dominance, manifest refraction, cycloplegic refraction. Results: 992 (66%) subjects were right-eye dominant while 511 (34%) subjects were left-eye dominant. The dominant eyes had lower spherical equivalents (SE) and cylinders than the non-dominant eyes (-5.36 D vs. -5.48 D and -0.70 D vs. -0.76 D, respectively, P<0.001). The ocular dominance was significantly associated with the lower myopic eye in subjects with SE anisometropia >0.5 D (P<0.05). There was also significant association between the dominant eyes and the lower astigmatic eyes in the subjects with astigmatic anisometropia > 0.25 D (P<0.05). In unilateral astigmatic subjects, non-astigmatic eyes were noted to be the dominant eyes in 111 (57.51%) subjects and astigmatic eyes represented dominance in 82 (42.49%) subjects. The difference was not statistically significant (P=0.249). The ocular dominance was not associated with the sex. Conclusion: In Chinese myopic subjects, the dominant eye usually had lower myopic SE and lower astigmatism compared with the non-dominant eye, especially in subjects with high amount of anisometropia.