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Abstract Introduction: Accommodation interferes with accurate measurement of refractive errors especially in children. This study compares automated refraction with and without cycloplegia and manual objective refraction to the final acceptance in children. Objectives: · To determine the concordance of refractive error, determined by automated refraction with and without cycloplegia and manual refraction method. · To compare the values obtained by automated refraction with and without cycloplegia. Methods: Prospective cross sectional observational study in children aged between 10 to 16 years. After evaluation of the visual acuity with Snellen’s chart, non-cycloplegic automated refraction was taken. After adequate cycloplegia, automated refraction as well as retinoscopic refraction was done followed by post cycloplegic final acceptance. The spherical and cylindrical error as well as the spherical equivalent of non-cycloplegic and cycloplegic automated refraction and manual refraction were compared to the final acceptance. Analysis was done using SPSS software. Results: The study had 37 myopes and 23 hyperopes and revealed that in hyperopes, spherical error by non-cycloplegic automated refraction did not correlate with manual retinoscopic refraction or final acceptance whereas in myopes, non-cycloplegic automated refraction was reliable. But cycloplegic automated refraction correlated well to both retinoscopic refraction and final acceptance in both myopes and hyperopes. Study also revealed a significant difference between non-cycloplegic and cycloplegic refraction in hyperopes. Conclusion: Cycloplegic automated refraction is as reliable as retinoscopy in both myopes and hyperopes whereas non-cycloplegic automated refraction alone should not be used to prescribe glasses in children. Retinoscopy gives the best measurements amongst all the three.
M. et al. (Fri,) studied this question.