Peripheral Refraction, Wave Front of the Eye and Visual Performance in the Correction of Myopia in Children with Bifocal Soft Contact Lenses with High Addition

Purpose: to study the effect of bifocal soft contact lens (BSCL) with an ADD of 4 diopters on peripheral refraction (PR), optical and ergonomic eye parameters in children with myopia.Patients and methods. 26 patients (52 eyes) with myopia –3.09 ± 1.13 diopters at the age of 10.04 ± 1.5 years without correction and with correction by BSCL Prima BIO Bi-focal ( Okay Vision Retail, Russia). All patients underwent a horizontal and vertical PR study on an open field autorefractometer Grand Seiko WAM-5500 (Japan), wavefront aberrations were studied on OPD-Scan III aberrometer (Nidek, Japan), contrast sensitivity under mesopic conditions were studied on a Mesotest 2 instrument (Oculus, Germany) and visual productivity was studied using test tables.Results. The visual acuity of the distance with a BSCL correction of 0.98 ± 0.04 did not differ (p = 0.26) from the maximum visual acuity corrected by spherocylindrical glasses of 0.99 ± 0.04. BSCL induces myopic defocus in all peripheral zones, with a maximum value of 15° and a sharp decrease of 30°. Peripheral myopic defocus induced by the lens at a horizontal and vertical angle of 15 degrees did not depend on the initial degree of myopia. BSCL increases the total RMS from 0.07 ± 0.02 μm to 0.19 ± 0.07 μm in the 3 mm zone (p < 0.01) and from 0.27 ± 0.09 μm to 1.18 ± 0, 23 μm in the 6 mm zone (p < 0.01), mainly due to an increase in spherical aberration from –0.0005 ± 0.006 μm to 0.06 ± 0.01 μm (p < 0.01) and from 0.01 ± 0.09 μm to 0.58 ± 0.14 μm (p < 0.01) in the 3 mm and 6 mm zones, respectively. An increase in the overall RMS in BSCL reduces the quality of eye optics and contrast sensitivity under mesopic conditions, but does not impair visual productivity.Conclusion. BSCLs with a high ADD of 4 diopters are capable of inducing significant myopic peripheral defocus due to the induction of spherical aberration, while maintaining high visual acuity and not changing ophthalmic ergonomics, which makes them a pathogenetically substantiated method for correcting myopia and preventing its progression in children and adolescents.