| Sumario: | Background: The purpose of this study was to determine if short-term use of base-in prism would result in improved reading rate during oral and silent reading in school-aged children with symptomatic convergence insufficiency (CI). Methods: Fifteen school-aged children, ages 9 to 15, with symptomatic CI orally read grade-equivalent passages for 5 minutes under 3 conditions: habitual correction, base-in prism, and size lenses, as well as a story silently for about 7 minutes with both base-in prism and size lenses. The reading rate in corrected words per minute (CWPM) was calculated for each minute of the five minutes of oral reading. The words per minute (WPM) was calculated for the silent reading. A symptoms survey was given to each subject, asking them to compare both BI prism and size lenses to habitual correction during silent reading. Results: The mean CWPM for the oral reading with the habitual correction was 119 (SD=33.13), with base-in prism was 129 (SD=34.20), and with the size lens was 128 (SD=38.00). A repeated measures ANOVA indicated that the reading rate for habitual correction was significantly slower from the base-in prism and size lens conditions, but that prism and size lenses were not different from each other. The mean WPM for the silent read for the base-in prism was 127 (SD=52.3), and with the size lenses was 139 (SD=55.5). A repeated measures ANOVA found no difference between the two conditions. The mean symptom survey score for basein prism was 7.33 (SD=13.85) and for size lenses was 5.07 (SD=18.81). A paired t-test found no significant difference between perceived symptoms experienced under both conditions. Conclusions: Our data suggests that with short-term use of prisms, there was no improvement with reading rate and accuracy when compared to size lenses. In addition, in the prism and size lens conditions children reported improvements in visual comfort and performance.
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