SEEING PROGRESS
HOW CAN I GET RID OF THESE READING GLASSES?
THE STATE OF THE ART IN PRESBYOPIA CORRECTION
AUTHOR John Meyer, MD
W
hen we’re young, we often don’t
realize how good things are
until time passes and things
change. Being able to wake
up and just go about our day
without even realizing we have
eyes is normal for most people.
Some of us need glasses for distance vision,
but one pair of glasses or contact lenses work well the whole day
until around age 40. Then, almost overnight we cannot see to read
without holding material at arm’s length, and eventually our arms
are too short. At this point, we are tied to reading glasses or bifocals.
This is often the earliest indicator of our aging and even though it
is not possible to slow aging, it would be nice not to be reminded
several times a day of that fact.
Cheaters are great for improving reading vision, but they make
distance vision worse and need to be put on and taken off many
times a day as needed. They are hard to keep track of and require
taking hands off one’s work to put on.
Bifocals are a nice tool, allowing reading and distance vision
with one pair of glasses, but they also require compromises. Only
a portion of the lens will focus for each distance, and one needs to
look through different parts of the lens to see different distances.
Golf, seeing the front and back sights of a gun and other activities
requiring vision of different distances at the same time are adversely
affected by bifocals.
Monovision contact lenses also work well, but depth perception
is lost with monovision. Multifocal contact lenses are also pretty
good these days but quality and sharpness of vision may not be
great, and allergies and dryness also cause problems.
Surgical options exist. LASIK can provide monovision but with
the same loss of depth perception as monovision contact lenses.
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JUNE 2019
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