Atropine Provides Better Cycloplegia for Refractive Error Measurement in Young Children

Objective: To compare the efficacy of cycloplegia with atropine and cyclopentolate for the measurement of refractive error in preschool and young school-aged children. Design: Post hoc analysis of data from prospective cohort studies. Methods: This study used data derived from 2 prospective cohort studies that measured refractive error before and after administration of cycloplegic eye drops in children aged 3 to 7 years. One of these studies performed cycloplegic refraction using cyclopentolate 1% eye drops administered 2 times 1 hour before cycloplegic refraction. The other study used atropine 1% eye drops administered twice daily for 5 days prior to cycloplegic refraction. Demographic and clinical data were used to perform propensity score matching to control for potentially confounding factors when analyzing the differences in outcome of refractive error measurements between groups. Results: 1542 eyes were included in each treatment group. Mean age was 4.6 years in both treatment more...