Impact on Distance and Near Contrast Sensitivity of Multifocal Contact Lenses: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: To investigate the impact on distance and near contrast sensitivity (CS) after fitting multifocal contact lenses (MFCLs) for presbyopia correction according to the scientific evidence already published.

Methods: Three bibliographic search was conducted on PubMed, Web of Sciences, and Scopus. Inclusion criteria were articles written in English evaluating distance and/or near CS in presbyopic patients using MFCLs, controlled clinical trials, and articles published from 2000 to 2024. After reading and analyzing carefully the articles that were finally included, the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool for clinical trials was used to evaluate the quality of the research.

Results: A total of eight articles were considered. One study did not find significant changes in binocular contrast sensitivity function (CSF) after fitting center-distance MFCL (CD) in the dominant eye and a center-near (CN) in the nondominant eye. Another research did not detect significant differences comparing CN MFCLs with monovision. However, another study found significant differences when comparing CN MFCL with spectacles. Half of studies only reported the comparison in CSF among different MFCL designs, with two studies confirming worse visual performance with MFCLs compared to pinhole contact lenses. Concerning the CASP analysis, some level of variability in the quality scores was found, with 5/13 in three studies, 6/13 in three studies, 7/13 in one study, and 8/13 in one study.

Conclusions: The limited evidence on the impact on CS of using MFCLs does not allow to extract consistent generalizable conclusions, with only three studies suggesting a variable impact and no evidence of the real clinical benefit of using this metric for the evaluation and optimization of MFCL fitting. More research is needed on this topic.