Do MCH prisms change asthenopic complaints when reading?

Abstract

Purpose. Asthenopic symptoms mostly occur during demanding near-sighted tasks and are related to binocular symptoms (e.g. heterophoria), among others. Correction of symptomatic heterophoria with prismatic glasses is one way to treat the symptoms. This study investigates the effect of wearing a horizontal prismatic correction for 6 months.

Material and Methods. A total of 87 subjects were assigned to a heterophoric prism group (N=32), a heterophoric control group (N= 31) or an orthophoric control group (N= 24) according to their MCH heterophoria. In the heterophoric prism group, the subjects were prescribed glasses with a prismatic correction for 6 months according to their distance correction; in contrast, the subjects in the heterophoric control group had to wear glasses without prismatic correction for the same period. The effect of the prisms on complaints due to asthenopic symptoms was investigated by comparing the total sum obtained in the CISS questionnaire at the beginning of the study and after 6 months (before and after wearing glasses) for the 3 groups.

Results. A (long-term) prism effect was not apparent in the CISS total score. In both the heterophoric prism group and in the heterophoric control group, the CISS total score increased slightly and non-significantly after 6 months. When considering the heterophoric subjects with an increased CISS score at baseline, a nevertheless slight but non-significant decrease of symptoms was observed. All changes were observed in both the heterophoric prism group and the heterophoric control group. An additional analysis using binocular profiles showed a reduction in symptoms by numbers and specifically for subjects with reduced vergence facility.

Conclusion. Wearing an individual, horizontal prismatic correction had no effect on the overall CISS-score for our test subjects. Further methods that allow a systematic recording of symptoms and optometric parameters are probably necessary to observe an effect. These could be binocular profiles that classify individuals according to their binocular parameters.