Astigmatismo después de cirugía refractiva corneal con láser de excímeros: Reporte preliminar

a retrospective, cross-sectional and comparative study was conducted a month after performing surgery in 194 eyes to correct compound myopic and hypermetropic astigmatisms. the studied variables were k keratometry, keratometric astigmatism, refractive astigmatism, spherical equivalent, corrected keratometric astigmatism and corrected refractive astigmatism. descriptive statistics were attained by the t test for depending samples with a statistical significance level p < 0.05. a reduction of 5 d (average) was obtained in keratometry that justifies the changes of the rest of the variables. statistically significant changes were observed in all the studied variables with tendency towards emmetropization. the spherical equivalent suffered an average variation over 5 d, which means an approach of the focal lines and conoid regularization, and a greater correction in the refractive astigmatism than in the keratometric astigmatism. after surgery, it was found a small group of patients with low degrees of astigmatism that did not exist before surgery. it was called induced astigmatism, and it was higher in the case of keratometric astigmatism