Subjective Quality of Vision After Myopic LASIK: Prospective 1-Year Comparison of Two Wavefront-Guided Excimer Lasers.

PURPOSE: To compare subjective quality of vision between two wavefront-guided lasers in the treatment of myopia up to 1 year postoperatively.

METHODS: In this prospective randomized study, 100 eyes of 50 patients were treated with wavefront-guided LASIK. One eye was treated with the WaveLight Allegretto Wave Eye-Q 400-Hz excimer laser (Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Hünenberg, Switzerland) and the other was treated with the VISX Star S4 IR CustomVue excimer laser (Abbott Medical Optics, Santa Ana, CA). Patients completed a questionnaire assessing quality of vision and visual symptoms preoperatively and at postoperative months 1, 3, 6, and 12.

RESULTS: The Allegretto system demonstrated non-statistically significant superiority in several subjective parameters as early as 1 month after surgery. At 12 months, there was better clarity during the day (P = .001) in the Allegretto group. Subgroup analyses were performed on eyes with preoperative higher order aberrations of 0.3 µm or less and in patients with preoperative higher order aberrations greater than 0.3 µm. In subgroup analysis, there were no differences between the two systems in eyes with low higher order aberrations or high higher order aberrations. Patients did not express any preference for one system over the other when surveyed at 1 year postoperatively.

CONCLUSIONS: One year after surgery, there were no differences in self-reported quality of vision outcomes with the exception of better clarity of vision during the day in the eyes treated with the Allegretto system. Patients did not express any preference for one treatment modality over the other.