Critical Visual Acuity (Cva): A Novel Clinical Parameter For Enhanced Visual Capacity Assessment

To develop and validate a novel clinical parameter for assessing distance visual capacity by incorporating reading speed: the Critical Visual Acuity (CVA).

Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital of Alexandroupolis, Alexandroupolis, Greece.

Participants were divided into two study groups: the Control Group (CG) and the Patients Group (PG). Monocular and binocular best spectacle-corrected distance visual acuity (BSCDVA) and CVA at 300 cm were measured using the Democritus Digital Acuity & Reading Test (DDART) web-based digital chart. Additionally, subjective visual capacity assessment was conducted using the NEI-VFQ-25 questionnaire. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was employed to evaluate CVA’s diagnostic ability. Participants were classified as having impaired or non-impaired visual capacity based on their NEI-VFQ-25 scores.

A total of 370 participants were included. ROC curve analysis demonstrated that the CVA’s area under the curve (AUC) was significantly higher than that of VA. Moreover, CVA exhibited superior sensitivity and specificity compared to VA in distinguishing impaired from non-impaired visual capacity.

Assessing visual capacity is a complex process, and traditional visual acuity (VA) does not account for crucial factors such as reading speed. The newly developed CVA parameter provides a more accurate evaluation of visual capacity compared to VA, offering potential clinical advantages in assessing functional vision.