Sometimes yellow-tinted lenses are recommended to help improve visual quality. As yellow lenses filter blue light, it is believed that their use could decrease the intensity of scattered light in the eye (retinal straylight). However, the results of some studies have contradicted this assumption (Van Os et al. 2017). Currently various nontinted blue-light-blocking lenses are used to protect the eyes from short-wavelength light. The objective of this study was to determine whether blue-light-blocking lenses affect the levels of retinal straylight in the eye. A straylight meter (C-Quant, Oculus) was used for retinal straylight measurements. The measurements were performed under four different conditions: 1. without a spectacle lens in front of the eye, 2. with a plano lens without an antireflective (AR) coating, 3. with a lens with a blue-light-blocking coating, and 4. with a yellow-tinted lens without an AR coating. The study involved 37 subjects with a mean age of 22 ± 1.3 (SD) years. No significant differences in straylight parameters (s) (p > 0.05) were observed for measurements obtained without a lens in front of the eye (log[s] = 0.90 ± 0.02 [SE]), with the uncoated lens (log[s] = 0.92 ± 0.02) and with the lens with a blue-light-filtering coating (log[s] = 0.92 ± 0.02). Retinal straylight was significantly increased with the use of a yellow-tinted lens (log[s] = 0.96 ± 0.02) compared with no lens (p < 0.001). Neither yellow-tinted lenses nor nontinted blue-light-blocking lenses reduce the levels of retinal straylight in the eye.
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