Corneal refractive error and astigmatism in patients aged 6 to 18 years with a history of retinopathy of prematurity and birth weight of <1500 g.

Purpose: To investigate corneal refractive power (CR) and astigmatism (AS) in 6- to 18-year-old children with a history of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and birth weight of <1500 g who either did or did not undergo retinal photocoagulation (PC).

Study design: Retrospective study.

Methods: We examined 143 eyes of 77 children in 2021. The children were divided into three groups for evaluation of CR and AS: those with a birth weight of ≥2500 g (normal birth weight [NBW] group, 13 eyes) as controls, those with spontaneously resolved ROP (sr-ROP group, 27 eyes), and those who underwent PC for treatment of ROP (PC-ROP group, 103 eyes). Swept-source anterior segment optical coherence tomography was used to analyze the cornea.

Results: The median CR in the NBW, sr-ROP, and PC-ROP groups was 42.2 (41.3, 42.8) diopters (D), 44.5 (43.2, 45.5) D, and 45.2 (43.8, 46.6) D, respectively. The median AS in the NBW, sr-ROP, and PC-ROP groups was 1.2 (1.0, 1.5) D, 1.1 (0.8, 1.6) D, and 2.1 (1.4, 2.7) D. In the PC-ROP group, the with-the-rule astigmatic axis was 97%. In all three groups, a strong positive correlation was found between the mean anterior and posterior CR (NBW: r=0.795, sr-ROP: r=0.842, PC-ROP: r=0.890) and AS (NBW: r=0.883, sr-ROP: r=0.841, PC-ROP: r=0.860).

Conclusion: CR was significantly higher in the sr-ROP (p=0.013) and PC-ROP (p<0.001) groups than in the NBW group. The PC-ROP group had significantly more AS than the sr-ROP group. There was a strong correlation between the anterior and posterior CR and AS.