Myopia progression in adolescent wearers of soft contact lenses and spectacles

Abstract

The purpose of this 3-year, randomized clinical trial was to determine the difference in myopia progression in adolescents wearing soft contact lenses over a control group wearing spectacles. A total of 175 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14 years were randomized into 2 groups, spectacle wearers and soft contact lens wearers. The main result was that the spherical equivalent change between the groups showed no clinical or statistically significant difference. However, when a power vector analysis was used, which uses all the refractive error data, a small but statistically significant (F test = 4.24, T2 = 17.35, p < 0.01) difference between the groups was found (i.e., the refractive error of the spectacle wearers had a slight increase in astigmatism). It can be concluded that soft contact lens wear does not lead to additional myopia progression in adolescents.