Complexity of contact lens fitting after refractive surgery

PURPOSE: To quantify and describe the complexity of contact lens correction on corneas altered by refractive surgery. DESIGN: A case-control study involving postrefractive surgery patients and controls from one multidisciplinary contact lens practice. METHODS: The contact lens care of one randomly selected eye of 30 postrefractive surgery patients (15 postincisional and 15 postlamellar refractive surgery cases) was retrospectively analyzed and compared with that of 30 age,and,gender matched nonrefractive surgery controls. We quantified the complexity by the number of diagnostic lenses used to establish the initial lens order, the number of ordered lenses required to complete the fit, and the number of office visits during the first 4 months of lens care. Final contact lens optical powers, corrected visual acuities, complications, and lens success/failure were also studied. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Postrefractive surgery eyes utilized statistically more diagnostic lenses (P = .048), ordered lenses (P = .008), and office visits (P < .0001). There were no statistical differences in the number of office visits, number of diagnostic contact lenses used, and number of ordered contact lenses between the postincisional and postlamellar refractive surgery patients. Although final contact lens optical powers were not significantly different (P = .06) between the two groups, contact lens corrected LogMAR acuities were statistically worse (P = .013) in the postrefractive surgery eyes than in the control group. Contact lens failures occurred in four postrefractive surgery eyes, while no eyes in the control C group failed to tolerate contact tenses. CONCLUSIONS: Corneas altered by either incisional or lamellar refractive surgery techniques are more challenging to fit with contact lenses than nonsurgically altered eyes, requiring more lenses and chair time, while resulting in slightly poorer contact lens corrected visions and more failures.