Randomized contralateral eye study of myopia control between aspheric multifocal soft contact lens and orthokeratology in children.

Background: This study aimed to compare myopia progression in children wearing an aspheric multifocal contact lens and an orthokeratology (OrthoK) lens.

Methods: A total of 65 participants, aged 9.70 ± 1.31 years, were fitted with an OrthoK lens in one randomly assigned eye and a multifocal soft contact lens in the contralateral eye for the first 6 months (period 1). Following this, contact lens wear was discontinued in both eyes for 1 month, after which the two lens-wearing methods were swapped between eyes and continued for another 6 months (period 2). Axial length (AL), spherical equivalent refraction (SER), central corneal thickness (CCT), and central choroidal thickness (CChT) were measured at the 0-, 6-, 7-, 13-, and 14-month visits. AL and SER were the primary outcome measures.

Results: For the OrthoK and multifocal soft lens, AL elongation was 0.14 ± 0.11 mm and 0.23 ± 0.12 mm, respectively, after period 1. AL elongation for the OrthoK and multifocal lens was 0.12 ± 0.19 mm and 0.20 ± 0.13 mm, respectively, after period 2. The SER change for the OrthoK and multifocal lens was -0.20 ± 0.27 D and -0.33 ± 0.30 D after period 1 and -0.26 ± 0.40 D and -0.36 ± 0.46 D after period 2, respectively. No significant differences were observed between the two treatment groups (all P > 0.05).

Conclusions: During the 14-month observation period, no statistically significant differences in myopia progression were found between the aspheric multifocal contact lens and the OrthoK lens. Further longitudinal observation is necessary to characterize the disparities in long-term myopia-control efficacy between the two intervention strategies.

Trial registration: ChiCTR, ChiCTR2000041520. Registered 27 December 2020, https://www.chictr.org.cn/ChiCTR2000041520. Retrospectively registered.