Association of clear vs blue-light filtering intraocular lenses with mental and behavioral disorders and diseases of the nervous system among patients receiving bilateral cataract surgery

To analyze new-onset mental and behavioral disorders and nervous system diseases in patients with cataract implanted with either non–blue-light filtering (BLF) or BLF intraocular lenses (IOLs) in both eyes. SETTING: Department of Ophthalmology, Kymenlaakso Central Hospital, Kotka, Finland. DESIGN: A retrospective registry-based cohort study of patients operated between September 2007 and December 2018 who were followed until December 2021. We included 4986 patients who underwent bilateral cataract surgery. METHODS: Patients were implanted with either non-BLF IOLs (N = 2609) or BLF IOLs (N = 2377) in both eyes. Follow-up before the first-eye surgery and between the first-eye and the second-eye surgery was performed to acknowledge the preexisting disorders and diseases. After the second-eye surgery, the groups were analyzed for the new-onset mental and behavioral disorders and diseases of the nervous system subcategorized by the International Classification of Diseases codes. RESULTS: 1707 male and 3279 female patients, aged 73.2 ± 8.6 years at the first-eye surgery and 74.3 ± 8.8 years at the second-eye surgery, were identified. In univariate log-rank tests, the use of BLF IOLs showed no association in overall new-onset disorders or diseases over non-BLF IOLs, in any subtype diagnosis codes except for sleep disorders, which favored BLF IOLs (P = .003). A multivariate analysis adjusted for age and sex identified no associations in any new-onset disorders or diseases. Multivariate analysis of sleep disorders showed a nonsignificant advantage for BLF-IOLs (hazard ratio 0.756, 95% CI 0.534-1.070, P = .114). CONCLUSIONS: BLF IOLs were not associated with mental and behavioral disorders or diseases of the nervous system.