To compare the effect of astigmatism correction upon Mel 80 excimer laser surgery with or without an eye registration system.

This retrospective analysis investigates a group (eye registration group) of surface laser ablation surgeries for myopic astigmatism correction, with operation on 27 eyes from 15 patients with guidance of the eye registration system and 40 eyes from 29 patients without guidance from the eye registration system. The evaluation of astigmatism correction was performed by the Alpins method, measuring the amount and axis of astigmatism before and after the operations.

The average of the correction index (the ratio of the surgically induced amount of astigmatism correction to the intended amount of astigmatism correction) for the eye registration group was calculated to be 0.94±0.30 and, for non-eye registration group, was 0.92±0.41, showing no statistical significant difference between the two groups ( p =0.762). However, the comparison of the index of success (the ratio of the difference vector to the intended amount of astigmatism correction) favorably demonstrated the effectiveness of eye registration (0.23±0.34 for eye registration group, 0.47±0.54 for non-eye registration group, p =0.03). The absolute angle of error (AE), a measure of difference in angle between the ablated axis of astigmatism correction and the desired axis of astigmatism correction, was lower on average for the eye registration group than for the non-eye registration group (3.52±7.69 to 12.5±20.69 degrees, p =0.015).

Eye registration-guided surface laser ablation is suggested to be beneficial for the reduction of errors in astigmatism correction.