Nearsighted individuals typically have problems seeing well at a distance and must wear glasses or contact lenses. The nearsighted eye is usually longer than a normal eye, and its cornea may also be steeper, therefore, when light passes through the cornea and lens, it is focused in front of the retina, making distant images appear blurred. There are several refractive surgery solutions available to correct nearly all levels of this condition. LASIK, Refractive Lens Exchange, and Contact lenses are a few of the options available to correct nearsightedness.
Farsighted individuals typically develop problems reading up close before the age of 40. The farsighted eye is usually slightly shorter than a normal eye and may have a flatter cornea. Thus, the light of distant objects focus behind the retina, unless the natural lens can compensate fully. Near objects require greater focusing power to be seen clearly and therefore, blur more easily. LASIK, Refractive Lens Exchange and Contact lenses are a few of the options available to correct farsightedness.
Asymmetric steepening of the cornea or natural lens causes light to be focused unevenly, which is the main optical problem in astigmatism. To individuals with uncorrected astigmatism, images may look blurry or shadowed. Astigmatism can accompany any form of refractive error and is very common; it can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, corneal relaxing incisions, laser vision correction, and special implant lenses.
Presbyopia is a condition that typically becomes noticeable for most people around age 45. In children and young adults, the lens inside the eye can easily focus on distant and near objects. With age, the lens loses its ability to focus adequately. Although presbyopia is not completely understood, the lens and its supporting structures lose the ability to make the lens longer during close vision tasks. To compensate, affected individuals usually find holding reading material further away makes the image clearer. Ultimately, aids such as reading glasses are typically needed by the mid-forties. Besides glasses, presbyopia can be corrected in a number of ways including: monovision and multifocal contact lenses, monovision laser vision correction, and new presbyopia correcting implant lenses.
