Common Vision Problems
Nearsightedness
What is Nearsightedness?
Nearsightedness, or myopia, occurs when the cornea is too steep or the eye is too long. This causes visual images to focus in front of the retina causing blurry distance vision. Treatments include glasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery.
Signs of Nearsightedness:
Myopic people often have headaches or eyestrain, and might squint or feel fatigued when driving or playing sports. If you experience these symptoms while wearing your glasses or contact lenses, you may need a comprehensive eye examination as well as a new prescription.
Nearsightedness treatments include:
Nearsightedness may be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery. Refractive surgery, such as IntraLASIK® or Refractive Lensectomy can reduce or even eliminate your dependence on glasses or contacts. The most common procedures are performed with an excimer laser.
Farsightedness
What is Farsightedness?
Farsightedness, or hyperopia, occurs when the cornea is too flat or the eye is too short. This causes visual images to focus at a point behind the retina resulting in blurry vision at near tasks and occasionally at distance as well.
Signs of Farsightedness:
Farsighted people sometimes have headaches or eyestrain, and may squint or feel fatigued when performing work at close range. If you get these symptoms while wearing your glasses or contact lenses, you may need an eye exam and a new prescription.
Farsightedness treatments include:
Farsightedness can be corrected with glasses or contact lenses to change the way light rays bend into the eyes. Refractive surgery, such as IntraLASIK® or Refractive Lensectomy is another option for correcting hyperopia. It may reduce or eliminate your need to wear glasses or contact lenses.
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Astigmatism
What is Astigmatism?
Astigmatism occurs when the cornea is curved more in one direction than another (like a football). A patient with astigmatism will have difficulty focusing on objects at any distance. Astigmatism often occurs in combination with nearsightedness (myopia) and farsightedness (hyperopia).
Signs of Astigmatism:
If you have only a small amount of astigmatism, you may not notice it or have just slightly blurred vision. Sometimes uncorrected astigmatism can give you headaches or eyestrain, and distort or blur your vision.
Astigmatism treatments include:
Astigmatism can be corrected with glasses or contact lenses. You also may choose refractive surgery for correcting your astigmatism.
Presbyopia
What is Presbyopia?
When people develop presbyopia, they find they need to hold books, magazines, newspapers, menus and other reading materials at arm's length in order to focus properly. When they perform near work, they may have headaches or eyestrain, or feel fatigued.
Presbyopia treatments include:
Glasses with bifocal or progressive addition lenses (PALs) are the most common correction for presbyopia. Reading glasses are another choice. They may be worn just while doing close work, and may even be prescribed to wear over the top of contact lenses (usually worn for distance correction).
There are contact lenses for presbyopia, called multifocal lenses. You can obtain multifocal contact lenses in gas permeable or soft lens materials. Another type of contact lens correction for presbyopia is monovision, in which one eye wears a distance prescription, and the other wears a prescription for near vision. The brain learns to favor one eye or the other for different tasks. But while some people are delighted with this solution, others complain of dizziness or nausea, or miss the depth perception they once had.
What is Monovision?
Monovision is a technique that allows presbyopia patients to see distance clearly in one eye (usually the dominant eye) and up close clearly with the other eye. Patients who have monovision are often able to see well both at distance and near without corrective lenses. Monovision can be achieved with contact lenses or with refractive surgery procedures.
Your eye doctor can fit you with trial monovision contact lenses before you have your eyes corrected surgically with monovision. Most people's brains get accustomed to monovision within a matter of weeks.
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Dry Eye Syndrome
What is Dry Eye Syndrome? Some people do not produce enough tears to keep the eye comfortable. This is known as dry eye.
Symptoms of DES:
• stinging or burning eyes
• scratchiness
• stringy mucus in or around the eyes
• eye irritation from smoke or wind
• excess tearing
Excess tearing from "dry eye" sounds illogical, but if the tears
responsible for maintenance lubrication do not keep the eye wet enough,
the eye becomes irritated. When the eye is irritated, the lacrimal
gland produces a large volume of tears which overwhelms the tear
drainage system. These excess tears then overflow from your eye.
DES treatments include:
Eye drops called artificial tears are similar to your own tears. They lubricate the eyes and help maintain moisture.
Artificial tears are available without a prescription. There are many
brands on the market, so you may want to try several to find the one
you like best.
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