The effects of daily-wear contact lenses on contrast sensitivity in selected professional and collegiate female tennis players.

Contrast sensitivity (CS) has recently emerged as an important predictor of visual performance. Few studies, however, have been published involving CS and its role in vision for sport. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if significant differences occurred in CS between female professional and collegiate tennis players who wore daily-wear soft contact lenses (N = 10) and those players who wore no corrective lenses (N = 10) in competition as measured by the Stereo Optical Optec 2000 Vision Tester. Subjects were between the ages of 18 and 37 years. Mean ages were 21.76 (+/- 4.018) and 25.40 (+/- 5.379) years for those wearing lenses and those not, respectively. Each subject was preliminarily screened for SVA-distance, lateral/vertical phorias, stereopsis, and color perception. All subjects were within accepted limits. CS was assessed at 1.5, 3, 6, 12, and 18 cycles per degree (cpd). Each subject was assessed monocularly; eye initially assessed was determined randomly. A 2 x 2 factorial analysis of variance (alpha = .05) was used to analyze data. No significant differences were found between eyes. Significant differences were found at 3, 6, 12, and 18 cpd. It may be concluded that those female professional and collegiate tennis players wearing no corrective lenses were significantly higher in CS at intermittent and high spatial frequencies than those who wore daily-wear soft contact lenses in competition.