Portable Wavefront Sensor for measuring refractive errors in post cataract surgery patients

Purpose :  To evaluate a novel open-binocular low-cost  handheld device (QuickSee), for measuring refractive errors in post cataract surgery patients.

Setting: Tertiary referral hospital Fundacion Jimenez Diaz Madrid (Spain).

Methods:  refraction was performed in 79 patients (69,81 +/- 7,66 years) who underwent uneventful cataract surgery 6 weeks ago. We measure autorefraction and subjective refraction to determine their eyeglass prescription. Three measures with QuickSee were taken in all patients. Differences in refraction values (Subjective Vs QuickSee) as well as the visual acuity achieved by the patients with each refraction method (Subjective Vs QuickSee) were used to evaluate the performance of the device in measuring refractive errors

Results : Bland-Altman analyses of the data indicated a bias and limits of agreement between subjective refraction and QuickSee of -0,15 +/- 0,949(M), 0,057 +/- 0,481 (J0) and 0,068 +/- 0,424 (J45). According to visual acuity, QuickSee refraction was equal or better than achieved by subjective refraction in the 77,20% of the patients.

Conclusions : This study found agreement between the measurements obtained with the portable autorefractor and the prescriptions based on subjective refraction, only small differences between the visual acuity achieved by either method. These results suggest that the device is a useful autorefraction tool for post cataract surgery patients and has the advantages of being a low-cost, portable and open-field autorefractor, being especially useful in undeveloped countries