Agreement between methods of retinoscopy, conventional subjective refraction and fogging subjective refraction

Purpose: to compare the refractive error measurements achieved through three distinct techniques: retinoscopy, subjective method, and the subjective fogging method. Methods: Participants included 223 young adults aged 18 to 36 years (mean age: 25.63±5.31). The refractive error of one eye was measured under three different accommodation control conditions: subjective refraction, fogging subjective refraction and retinoscopy.Results: Data were collected for 223 young adults. The average Spherical value obtained by the retinoscopy method was 0.21 and the average cylinder was -0.76. These values were -0.01 and -0.75, respectively, in the subjective with fog method: The Spherical value and cylinder obtained by the regular subjective method were -0.13 and -0.74 D, respectively; The mean spherical equivalent with subjective refraction method was more minus than fogging subjective refraction and retinoscopy provided the most plus results. the difference in spherical and spherical equivalent value between three methods was significant (p- value< 0.001) but the difference in cylindrical value between three groups was not significant (p- value> 0.05). According to the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient analysis, the agreement between three methods for measuring sphere (ICC= 0.99), cylinder (ICC= 0.95) and spherical equivalent (ICC= 0.99) was good.Conclusions: The results showed that retinoscopy and fogging subjective refraction were the most similar methods, with a small mean difference. However, the comparison between retinoscopy and subjective refraction had wider limits of agreement than retinoscopy and fogging subjective refraction. Key words: Retinoscopy, subjective, refraction, fogging