Abstract: Objective To study the distribution of corneal astigmatism among middle aged and senior citizens with cataract. Methods The gender, age, nation, corneal astigmatism,minimum value of corneal curvature and maximum value of corneal curvature of 489 cataract patients(630 eyes)from First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University between July 2014 and October 2015 were collected, and the patients were divided into groups according to their gender, age, eyes and astigmatism type. Results The subjects in this study were aged between 47 and 98 years, among whom 234(302 eyes)were male and 255(328 eyes)were female. The astigmatic power were bigger than 2.00 D in 32 eyes(5.08%), between 1.01D and 2.00 D in 175 eyes(27.78%), and smaller than 1.00 D in 423 eyes(67.14%). The astigmatic power was positively correlated with the age(r=0.193, P=0.020). With-the-rule astigmatism was found in 240 eyes(38.10%),against-the-rule astigmatism in 360 eyes(57.14%), and oblique astigmatism in 30 eyes(4.76%). With the increase of age, the portion of with-the-rule astigmatism became smaller, the portion of against-the-rule astigmatism became bigger, but no definite trend was found for oblique astigmatism. Conclusion With the increase of age, the corneal astigmatism in cataract patients has an increase trend, and with-the-rule astigmatism gradually changes into against-the-rule astigmatism.

Key words: Cataract, Corneal astigmatism, Age