Purpose
To assess the precision (repeatability and reproducibility) and agreement of central corneal thickness (CCT) measurements by E-pach, Pentacam, Corvis ST and A-scan devices in healthy eyes.
Methods
Instrument diagnostic test study. A total of 100 patients were enrolled to measure right-eye CCT by E-pach, Pentacam, Corvis ST, and A-scan devices. To assess repeatability and reproducibility, the test-retest repeatability (TRT) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were calculated. The agreement among the four devices was evaluated with Bland-Altman plots.
Results
The E-pach showed repeatability (ICC=0.9981), interobserver reproducibility (ICC=0.9971) and intersession reproducibility (ICC=0.9825); the Pentacam, Corvis ST and A-scan also showed similar repeatability (all ICC≥0.9679), interobserver reproducibility (all ICC≥0.9730) and intersession reproducibility (all ICC≥0.9647). However, the E-pach yielded CCT values that were obviously lower than those of the A-scan and Pentacam (P<0.001) but higher than those of the Corvis ST (P<0.001). The 95% limits of agreement (LoA) in the Bland-Altman plots were 44.5 µm (E-pach vs. A-scan), 34.9 µm (E-pach vs. Corvis CT) and 32.5 µm (E-pach vs. Pentacam).
Conclusions
The E-pach is a portable, reliable and inexpensive pachymeter. However, the CCT values obtained from the E-pach are not interchangeable with those from Pentacam, Corvis ST and A-scan devices.