Comparison of Subjective Visual Experiences and Ocular Symptoms after Wavefront-Guided and Wavefront-Optimized LASIK in a Prospective Fellow Eye Study.

center dot PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to com-pare the subjective visual experience and ocular symp-toms of fellow eyes treated with wavefront-optimized laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (WFO-LASIK) and wavefront-guided laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (WFG-LASIK).center dot DESIGN: Prospective randomized fellow eye, controlled study.center dot METHODS: A total of 200 eyes of 100 subjects from a single academic center were enrolled and randomly as-signed to treatment with WFO-LASIK in one eye and WFG-LASIK in the fellow eye. Subjects filled out a val-idated 14-part questionnaire for each eye at the preoper-ative visit and at postoperative months 1, 3, 6, and 12.center dot RESULTS: In comparing the number of subjects who reported symptoms in the WFG-vs WFO-LASIK eyes, there was no difference in the number reporting any visual experience (glare, halos, starbursts, hazy vision, blurred vision, distortion, double or multiple images, fluc-tuations in vision, focusing difficulties, and depth per-ception; all P > .05) or ocular symptoms (photosensitiv-ity, dry eye, foreign body sensation, ocular pain; all P > .05). There was no preference for WFG-LASIK-treated (28%) or the WFO-LASIK-treated eye (29%), with the majority of subjects reporting no preference (43%; X2 P = .972). Of the subjects who preferred one eye or the other, the preferred eye saw statistically better than the fellow eye (0.8 +/- 1.4 Snellen line, P = .0002). There was no other difference in subjective visual experience, ocular symptoms, or refractive characteristics when tak -ing into account eye preference.center dot CONCLUSIONS: The majority of subjects had no eye preference. For subjects who did have eye preference, the only detectable difference was better visual acuity in the preferred eye. (Am J Ophthalmol 2023;251: 165-172.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)