Assessment of the accommodative facility training with flippers between sessions

Abstract

Purpose: Accommodative anomalies are a group of different visual problems that reduce the efficiency of the visual system. Binocular accommodative facility (BAF) therapy is used to train the ability of the eye to repeatedly change its accommodative state when changing focus between two focal planes during periods. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of BAF training with standard flipper dioptric treatments on a group of non-symptomatic young adults. Material and methods: 67 subjects were recruited among students attending the Optometry Clinic of the Optometry Faculty (USC, Spain). All of them had good general health and were free of any accommodative or binocular problems. Subjects were scheduled for four sessions one-week apart. In each session, they were requested to measure the BAF in cycles/minute (cpm) with a ±2.00D flipper while focusing a near test at 40 cm. Patients were also requested to point out the difficulty of clearing with the minus, plus or with none pair of lenses. Results: There was a statistical difference in BAF between the first and the final session when the whole sample was analysed (paired t-test: p <0.001), and when the sample was grouped by lens clearing difficulties (paired t-test: all p ≤0.005). BAF showed a statistically significant difference between results obtained in each session (ANOVA: p =0.002) and between the results of contiguous paired sessions (paired t-test: all p ≤0.047). Conclusion: The present study showed the positive effect of traditional dioptric training in amplitude flexibility improvement.