Objective:

To relate anisometropia to stereopsis in myopic patients with or without associated astigmatism after excimer laser corneal refractive surgery (laser-assisted subepithelial keratectomy [LASEK] or photorefractive keratectomy [PRK], with intraoperative application of mitomycin-C [MMC]).

Methods:

A preexperimental, before-and-after study was carried out with 81 patients (162 eyes) treated with LASEK-MMC (65 patients) or PRK-MMC (16 patients) and followed for three months, in the refractive surgery service of Ramón Pando Ferrer Cuban Institute of Ophthalmology, in the period from January 2018 to January 2019. The variables studied were anisometropia, axial length difference, apart from stereopsis.

Results:

The average age was 24.7±3.7 years in the group treated with LASEKMMC and 24.1±3.1 years among the patients treated with PRK-MMC. 100% of the patients had compound myopic astigmatism in both eyes. Anisometropia was present in 47.7% of LASEK-MMC patients before the surgery, while four patients had anisometropia after the surgery (6.2%) (P=0.000). Of the patients treated with PRK-MMC, 31.3% were affected before surgery; this percentage decreased more than five times after surgery (P=0.000). Surgery improved stereopsis, particularly when there was no history of anisometropia.

Conclusions:

Patients treated with PRK-MMC and LASEK-MMC experience decreased anisometropia and improved stereopsis.