Peripheral myopization and visual performance with experimental rigid gas permeable and soft contact lens design

•We evaluated the peripheral refraction, optical quality and visual performance with custom designed peripheral gradient soft and rigid gas permeable (RGP) contact lenses (CL).•Lenses were designed to create a peripheral myopic defocus.•The optical and visual performance in central vision was clinically unaffected.•RGP induced a higher temporal and nasal myopization than Soft CL.•RGP peripheral gradient are more efficient than equivalent designs in soft materials for peripheral myopization and may produce a higher effect on myopia control.

PurposeTo evaluate the performance of two experimental contact lenses (CL) designed to induce relative peripheral myopic defocus in myopic eyes.MethodsTen right eyes of 10 subjects were fitted with three different CL: a soft experimental lens (ExpSCL), a rigid gas permeable experimental lens (ExpRGP) and a standard RGP lens made of the same material (StdRGP). Central and peripheral refraction was measured using a Grand Seiko open-field autorefractometer across the central 60° of the horizontal visual field. Ocular aberrations were measured with a Hartman-Shack aberrometer, and monocular contrast sensitivity function (CSF) was measured with a VCTS6500 without and with the three contact lenses.ResultsBoth experimental lenses were able to increase significantly the relative peripheral myopic defocus up to −0.50 D in the nasal field and −1.00 D in the temporal field (p < 0.05). The ExpRGP induced a significantly higher myopic defocus in the temporal field compared to the ExpSCL. ExpSCL induced significantly lower levels of Spherical-like HOA than ExpRGP for the 5 mm pupil size (p < 0.05). Both experimental lenses kept CSF within normal limits without any statistically significant change from baseline (p > 0.05).ConclusionsRGP lens design seems to be more effective to induce a significant myopic change in the relative peripheral refractive error. Both lenses preserve a good visual performance. The worsened optical quality observed in ExpRGP was due to an increased coma-like and spherical-like HOA. However, no impact on the visual quality as measured by CSF was observed.