Preoperative biometric measurements with anterior segment optical coherence tomography and prediction of postoperative intraocular lens position

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the biometric parameters of crystalline lens components and to find effective factors for predicting postoperative intraocular lens (IOL) position. This retrospective study included 97 eyes from 97 patients with a mean age of 63.00 +/- 12.38 (SD) years. The biometric measurements were performed by means of a 3-dimensional optical coherence tomography (3D-OCT) device. Specifically, anterior chamber depth (ACD), aqueous depth (AD), lens thickness (LT), lens meridian parameter (LMP), white-to-white diameters (WTW), anterior segment length (ASL), the anterior part of lens (aLT), and the posterior part of lens (pLT) were measured. Additionally, axial length (AL) and corneal radius (CR) were measured by the partial coherence interferometry. Ninety-seven eyes were divided into thin lens group (LT < 4.5mm) and thick lens group (LT >= 4.5mm). The differences between the above two groups were also analyzed. Postoperative IOL position was measured by 3D-OCT at 3 months postoperatively and regression formulas for predicting postoperative IOL position were developed by various combinations of preoperative factors. As lens thickened, ACD and AD became shallow (all P < .001). AD, ACD, ASL, aLT, and pLT showed statistically significant differences between two subgroups classified on the basis of LT (all P < .001). Meanwhile, the value obtained by subtracting aLT from pLT did not show any association with the other biometric measurements. The combination of ACD, aLT, pLT, AL, CR, and WTW showed the highest correlation with postoperative IOL position (R-2 = 0.536, P < .001). In conclusion, pLT-aLT was an independent factor not affected by any other variables and did not show significant difference between thin lens group and thick lens group. The subdivision of the lens structure using 3D-OCT helps to predict postoperative IOL position.