Preoperative prevalence of magnitude and type of anterior corneal astigmatism in cataract patients who underwent phacoemulsification in a teaching hospital in Kolkata, India: A retrospective observational study

To determine the magnitude and type of preoperative astigmatism in cataract patients and to find any relationship with their demographic profiles. It is a retrospective observational study. Records of patients who underwent phacoemulsification in KPC Medical College from July 2021 to June 2023 were screened for demographic profile, keratometryand astigmatism with its axis. Patients who had any major ocular surface disorder or corneal pathology or lid tumors or who underwent other ocular surgery prior was not included in this study. Name of the patients were not collected to maintain confidentiality and safeguard the interest of the patients. Data was collected on Microsoft Excel and was analyzed by SPSS software. 536 eyes of 524 patients were studied after considering all the excluding criteria. Mean age of the patients was 65.14 with range of 37 to 92. There were 252 males and 282 females. The mean residual astigmatism was 0.83 Dioptre (D).31 patients had no astigmatism. 341 patients (63.62%) have astigmatism less than 1D whereas 164 patients (30.6%) had 1D or more astigmatism. ATR had the highest prevalence (44.95%) followed by OA (32.67%) and WTR (22.97%) In this study we found 63.62% patients had corneal astigmatism less than 1.00 D which would need some keratorefractive correction (like on axis phaco or LRI) suited for a developing country like us and 30.6% patients had corneal astigmatism more than 1.00 D which would warrant use of toric lenses. Prevalence of ATR was highest in all age groups except 60-69 years.