Centration of excimer laser photorefractive keratectomy and changes in astigmatism.

One of the most important factors that influence the success of PRK might be corneal centration during treatment. We evaluated our centration rate in 49 eyes by using computer-assisted corneal topography. Only single zone treated eyes were chosen for the analysis and 91.5% of the eyes were centered within a 1 mm treatment zone while 51% were within 0.5 mm. At the end of the follow-up time of 10.4 months, these centration zones were found to have no influence on the attempted spherical refractive outcome, whereas increasing decentration induced an increase in postoperative astigmatism.