Purpose: To evaluate the relationship between high-order aberrations and refractive errors, and between high-order aberrations and age.
Methods: An analytic retrospective study of patients that underwent aberrometry examination was conducted. All subjects examined with LadarWave aberrometer at the Hospital de Olhos do Paraná from April 2004 to April 2005 were included in this study. The major inclusion criterion was 20/20 or better - corrected or not - visual acuity; and the major exclusion criterion, the presence of previous eye surgery or disease. The following variables were analyzed: age, refraction, spherical equivalent, and high-order aberrations wich were: coma, spherical aberration, others, and high-order root mean square (RMS). All data were obtained by LadarWave aberrometry examination, under cycloplegia, utilizing only 6.5 mm pupil results. High-order aberrations up to eight order Zernike's coefficients were evaluated. Patients were divided into 6 groups according to refraction error and into 3 groups according to age.
Results: Two hundred and one of 312 eyes were studied. The mean age was 33.9 +/- 10.1, varying from 7 to 62 years of age. Among the refraction error groups hyperopic patients with less than -0.75 D astigmatism (Group 5) showed a higher amount of spherical aberration, and hyperopic patients with more than -0.75 D astigmatism (Group 6) showed a higher amount of other and high-order RMS aberrations. In the general comparison between the age groups, the 45 or older group (Group C) showed a higher amount of all the analyzed aberrations.
Conclusion: a) There was a statistically significant positive relationship between hyperopia - with or without astigmatism - and spherical aberration and high-order RMS. b) There was a statistically significant positive relationship between age and all analyzed aberrations.