Clinical trial NCT01329848: Accommodation Disorders
Official title: Using Accommodative Lag to Diagnose Accommodation Disorders
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Accommodative Insufficiency
Ill-sustained Accommodation
Keywords: Accommodation
Reading
Autorefraction
Lead sponsor: Western University of Health Sciences
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Southern California College of Optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University
First posted: 2011-04-06
Enrollment: 83
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 30
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Graduate students from Western University of Health Sciences

Brief summary: This project will develop clinically useful, objective measurements of accommodative insufficiency and fatigue using continuous autorefraction recordings. The development of these procedures will help vision care professionals diagnose and treat accommodative anomalies.

Detailed description: This project studies accommodative function, the ability to focus while doing near work. Visual discomfort symptoms, such as headaches, sore eyes, and blurred vision are commonly associated with prolonged reading or other near work. Researchers have long suspected accommodative dysfunction was involved but most clinical studies have failed to establish a relationship between weak accommodation and symptoms or reading impairments. Recent research, however, has found that clinical measure overestimate accommodative function and encourage the use of objective, autorefraction methods to measure and study accommodative weakness. This project will accomplish three goals. First, using autorefraction objective reliable procedures will be developed for measuring accommodative lag, the difference between the target location and where the eye is focused. Second, experiments will measure in real-time the impact of accommodative lag on reading fluency and visual discomfort systems. Third, studies will explore the role of the slow adaptive component in accommodative weakness. This work will lead to better methods for diagnosing and treating accommodative disorders.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* older adolescent and young adult
* skilled readers who attend school
* are skilled readers
* have heavy reading demands

Exclusion Criteria:

* Age \> 30.
* Abnormal vergence system.
* Dry-eye.
* Uncorrected visual defects or significant ocular pathology.
* Learning disability or low IQ
* Medical conditions that might cause uncomfortable visual symptoms (e.g., migraine headaches, epilepsy, head trauma); sensory defects (e.g., deafness), or neurological conditions (e.g., stuttering) that could impair reading development or oral reading fluency.
* Somatosensory amplification.
* Systemic illness or medication associated with accommodative dysfunction.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Accommodation Lag 5D
timeFrame: 3 week period
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Conlon Symptom Survey
timeFrame: 3 weeks
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Pomona
country: United States
facility: Western University of Health Sciences
state: California
Study officials:
affiliation: Western University of Health Sciences
name: Chris Chase, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: