Glare disability in patients with hydrophilic and hydrophobic acrylic intraocular lens implants

PURPOSE: To compare glare disability test results in patients with hydrophilic and hydrophobic acrylic intraocular lenses (IOL). METHODS: Sixty eyes of 60 patients were studied in three groups of 20. Each eye in Group 1 had a single-piece hydrophilic acrylic (Bioacryl, Biotech, France) IOL implant, and each eye in Group 2 had a three-piece hydrophobic acrylic (AcrySof, Alcon, USA) IOL implant. Group 3 was the control group, and consisted of eyes without cataracts. Glare disability was tested using the Ophthimus glare sensitivity test (Ophthimus, Sweden). For each eye, we determined log contrast sensitivity values without exposure to glare source and with exposure to glare source. The difference between these values was recorded as the threshold contrast increase. An infrared camera was used to measure pupil diameter during glare disability testing, and pupil diameter greater than 4 mm was used as an exclusion criterion to eliminate edge design as a potential contributor to glare disability. RESULTS: The respective mean log contrast sensitivity scores for Groups 1, 2, and 3 in the absence of the glare source were 0.80 +/- 0.03, 0.81 +/- 0.04, and 0.79 +/- 0.08. The corresponding findings with glare source were 0.84 +/- 0.07, 0.89 +/- 0.07, and 0.84 +/- 0.03. The threshold contrast increase in Group 2 (0.070 +/- 0.035) was significantly higher than that in both Group 1 (0.043 +/- 0.040) and the control group (0.045 +/- 0.026) (p < 0.05 for both comparisons). There were no significant differences between Group 1 and the control group regarding log contrast sensitivity values with glare source and threshold contrast increase (p > 0.05 for both comparisons). CONCLUSIONS: The eyes with hydrophilic acrylic IOL showed better glare disability results than those with hydrophobic acrylic IOL. The superior performance of the hydrophilic acrylic IOL could be related to their lower refractive index and equi-convex design.