Purpose: To determine optimal corneal regions from which to derive corneal topographic astigmatism (CorT) in kerato-conic eyes.
Methods: In this retrospective study, potential measures of corneal astigmatism are calculated from raw total corneal power data (179 eyes from 124 patients) from a corneal tomographer. The measures are derived from annular corneal regions varying in both extent and center position, and evaluated according to the variability of the ocular residual astigmatism (ORA) in the cohort. This variability is quantified by the ORArms, which is the root-mean-squared distance of the ORAs from their summated vector mean in double angle space. The lower the ORArms, the better the corneal astigmatism measure corresponds to manifest refractive cylinder.
Results: Corneal astigmatism measures derived from regions centered on corneal vertex had ORArms values (mild: 1.07 diopters [D], moderate: 1.61 D, severe: 2.65 D) as low or lower than other measures derived from regions centered on thinnest point, corneal apex (front or back), or pupil center. Corneal astigmatism measures derived from a region centered 30% of the way toward thinnest point from corneal vertex appeared to have even lower ORArms values (mild: 1.05 D, moderate: 1.45 D, severe: 2.56 D). None of the corneal astigmatism measures corresponded closely with manifest refractive cylinder for severe keratoconus (ORArms > 2.50 D).
Conclusions: For keratoconic eyes, the CorT should be derived from an annular region centered 30% of the way toward thinnest point from corneal vertex, although when the keratoconus is mild, a standard corneal-vertex-centered CorT performs just as well. [J Refract Surg. 2023;39(3):206-213.].