Regarding the Question of Postoperative Asthenopia

Relevance. It is well known that asthenopic complaints, such as increased visual fatigue when working at close range, lacrimation, eye pain and headache after corneal refractive operations in recent years are increasingly common at routine ophthalmological practice. They cause significant subjective discomfort in patients and reduce the satisfaction of the surgery. The pathogenesis of asthenopia is a violation of the coordinated work of the accommodation and binocular systems as a result of their overstrain with excessive visual loads.

Purpose. To study the role of the lack of adequate optical correction before surgery in the development of asthenopia in patients with mild and moderate myopia after ReLEx SMILE surgery, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of drug correction of this condition.

Patients and methods. This study included 84 patients (128 eyes) who spend more than 8 hours at a computer due to their professional activity, without pathology of the visual organ that prevents keratorefractive operations, whose average age was 33.2 ± 1.9 years.

Results and discussion. The ReLEx SMILE operations in all patients were carried out without complications with the achievement of uncorrected visual acuity equal to the preoperative values of the maximum corrected visual acuity in the period of 1 week and 1 month. In the group with a preoperative lack of adequate optical correction, signs of asthenopia were more often manifested than in patients using full eyeglass or contact correction before surgery. The appointment of the drug Mydrimax® allows to improve the subjective state of patients with asthenopia and leads to the normalization of functional parameters.

Conclusion. Corneal refractive operations in patients with the lack of adequate correction of refractive disorders before surgery leads to a significantly significant increase in the initially impaired functional parameters compared to preoperative values, however, it does not reach normal values in most cases and is accompanied by a greater probability of developing postoperative asthenopia.

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