Researchers recently found that while monocular orthokeratology (ortho-K) is effective in suppressing axial length (AL) elongation in unilateral and bilateral myopic children and reducing anisometropia in unilateral myopic children, it cannot reduce anisometropia in bilateral myopic children after one-year of follow-up.

This one-year retrospective study evaluated 27 unilateral myopic children (group one) and 25 bilateral myopic children (group two) with anisometropia. Eyes with higher and lower spherical equivalent refractive error (SER) were assigned to H and L subgroups respectively, of both groups.

The team discovered that the mean changes in AL of H eyes and L eyes were 0.11±0.19mm and 0.30±0.28mm in group one and 0.09±0.14mm and 0.13±0.16mm in group two, respectively. They observed significant differences between AL changes in H eyes and L eyes of group one but no difference in group two. They noted that the AL of H eyes in groups one and two and the AL of H eyes in group one and L eyes in group two had the same increased rate.

“The OK lens can control the AL elongation in both eyes at the same rate, but it cannot reduce anisometropia value in bilateral myopia with anisometropia,” the researchers concluded in their paper.