Ocular residual astigmatism’s effect on high myopic astigmatism LASIK surgery

Purpose To analyze the effect of ocular residual astigmatism (ORA) on the effectiveness of LASIK for treating high myopic astigmatism. Methods This is an observational, cross-sectional study. We studied 116 consecutive myopic eyes with −3 diopters (D) or more of astigmatism that underwent LASIK surgery. The magnitude of uncorrected residual refractive astigmatism 3 months postoperatively was measured. Results The mean preoperative cylinder was −4.0±0.83 D (range, −7.5 to −3 D) and the mean preoperative ORA was 0.82±0.5 D. The mean residual refractive cylinder 3 months postoperatively was −0.78±0.83 D (range, −3 to 0 D). No correlation was found between ORA and the refractive cylinder 3 months postoperatively ( P =0.6). Conclusion In eyes with high myopic astigmatism undergoing LASIK, ORA was not correlated with the residual postoperative cylinder.