Accommodation lag is the amount by which the accommodative response of the eye is less than the dioptric stimulus to accommodation. This study was carried out at the Optometry Teaching Clinic, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria to compare the accommodation lag of corrected myopes and emmetropes. A total of 68 subjects between the ages of 18 and 30 and a mean age of 23.15±2.85 were used for this study. The accommodation lag was determined by taking the difference between the static and dynamic retinoscopic findings of each subject. Results obtained showed that 18(26.47%) myopes recorded a value of between -0.25DS and -1.00DS for both static and dynamic retinoscopy. For a finding of -1.25DS to -2.00DS, there were 7(10.29%) and 8(11.76%) myopes for static and dynamic retinoscopy respectively. The distribution of retinoscopic findings among emmetropes showed that 17(25%) and 7(10.30%) emmetropes recorded a value of between plano and -0.25DS for static and dynamic retinoscopy respectively. For a finding of +0.25DS to +0.50DS, there were 16(23.53%) and 20(29.41%) emmetropes for static and dynamic retinoscopy respectively. The mean value for accommodation lag among the myopes was 0.35±0.24D. For the emmetropes, the mean accommodation lag was 0.24±0.27D. Data analysis with SPSS version 21 using the Independent Sample T test revealed that there was no significant difference (P>0.05) in accommodation lag between the corrected myopes and the emmetropes used in this study. Myopes were advised to always put on their prescription glasses to ensure an improvement of their accommodative response.
