Study of ocular aberrations with age

introduction: aging has various effects on visual system. vision deteriorate, contrast sensitivity decreases and ocular aberrations apparently make the optical quality worse across the years. purpose: to prospective evaluate ocular aberrations along the ages. methods: three hundred and fifteen patients were examined, 155 were male (39.36%) and 160 were female (60.63%). ages ranged from 5 to 64 year-old, the study was performed from february to november, 2004. patients were divided into 4 age-groups according to ibge (instituto brasileiro de geografia e estatística) classification: 68 patients from 5 to 14 year-old, 55 patients from 15 to 24 year-old, 116 from 25 to 44 year-old and 76 from 45 to 67 year-old. all patients had the following characteristics: best corrected visual acuity > 20/25, emmetropia or spherical equivalent < 3.50 sd, refractive astigmatism < 1.75 cd on cycloplegic refraction, normal ophthalmologic exam and no previous ocular surgeries. this protocol was approved by federal university of s？o paulo institutional review board. total optical aberrations were measured by h-s sensor ladarwave？ custom cornea wavefront system (alcon laboratories inc, orlando, fla, usa) and were statistically analysed. corneal aberrations were calculated using ct-view software version 6.89 (sarver and associates, celebration, fl, usa). lens aberrations were calculated by subtraction. results: high-order (0.32 e 0.48 μm) and ocular spherical aberrations (0.02 e 0.26 μm) increased respectively in child and middle age groups. high order (0.27 μm) and corneal spherical aberrations (0.05 μm) did not show changes with age. lens showed a statistically significant spherical aberration increase (from -0.02 to 0.22 μm). vertical (from 0.10 to -0.07 μm) and horizontal coma (from 0.01 to -0.12 μm) presented progressively negative values with aging. conclusion: high-order and spherical aberrations increased with age due to lens contribution. the cornea did not affect significantly cha