Multifocal Contact Lenses Improve Reading Speed in Presbyopia

Multifocal contact lenses improve the average reading speed in patients with presbyopia compared with single vision correction, according to research published in Contact Lens and Anterior Eye. 

Investigators enrolled 30 individuals with presbyopia (mean age, 50 years) in the investigation and evaluated their silent reading performance while wearing single vision contacts and aspheric multifocal contact lenses. Participants wore 1 set of lenses for 2 weeks before crossing over to the other lens for another 2 weeks. While wearing the single vision contact lenses, study participants were allowed to wear reading glasses over the contact lenses to perform near work activities.

The researchers evaluated reading performance using standard International Reading Speed Text paragraphs displayed on a screen (0.4 logMAR print size at 40 cm distance) and monitored eye movements with an infrared eye tracker to determine reading speed, fixation duration, fixations per word, and percentage of regressions while wearing each contact lens.

Overall mean [SD] binocular and monocular mean reading speeds were 250 [68] and 235 [70] words per minute, respectively, with the single vision contact lenses, which improved to 280 [67] (P =.002) and 260 [59] words per minute (P =.01), respectively, while wearing multifocal contact lenses.

According to the report, these improvements were primarily due to the faster
average fixation duration and the lower number of fixations (P =.003 and P =.047, respectively). While average visual acuity was significantly better with single vision correction compared with multifocal contact lens wear (-0.06 vs 0.00 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution [logMAR]; P <.001), multifocal contact lenses improved near acuity in both monocular and binocular conditions (P <.001 for both).

Binocular viewing improved near visual acuity, reading speed, fixation duration, and ex-Gaussian mean of the normal distribution, but did not improve fixations per word (P =.22), percentage of regressions (P =.36), or ex-Gaussian exponential decay, the report shows.

“Since reading forms a strong predictor of functional vision, having a disproportionate impact on a patient’s quality of life, there is a growing interest in advancing reading performance as a primary outcome measure in clinical trials,” the study authors explain. “Silent reading performance, measured with standardized passages with continuous text, forms the preferred reading mode of competent readers from early age and is more relevant to the real-life reading process.”

Study limitations include a small sample size and failure to compare reading speed with multifocal contact lenses vs monovision therapy.

Disclosure: This research was supported by Alcon. Please see the original reference for a full list of disclosures.