Contact Lenses for Presbyopia

What is presbyopia?

Presbyopia is a normal change in the eye's ability to focus at different distances--from far away to close up. A lens inside the eye focuses much like the lens in a camera. When you are young, the lens is flexible and can focus at any distance. At about age 40, you may notice that you cannot see things up close as well as you used to. You may need to hold reading material farther away to see it clearly. This is because the lenses in your eyes lose some of the flexibility that allows you to focus up close.

How is it corrected?

Often presbyopia is corrected with bifocal glasses. Bifocals have the distance prescription on the top and the reading prescription on the bottom. People who already wear contact lenses can wear their contacts for distance and a pair of reading glasses or half-glasses for seeing close objects.

However, if you do not want to wear glasses at all, you may be able to correct presbyopia with contacts.

How can contact lenses help correct presbyopia?

• Monovision

  With monovision, you wear one contact lens for seeing distances in one eye and a lens with your reading prescription in the other eye. If you are nearsighted (you can see objects that are close to your eyes but not objects at a distance), you may not even need a contact lens in the eye you use for reading. Monovision takes time to get used to. You won't be using your two eyes together, and you won't have normal depth perception. Monovision does not work for everyone.

• Bifocal contacts

  Bifocal contact lenses have both your reading and distance prescription in each lens. Bifocal contacts are available as gas permeable ("rigid") and soft lenses. They also come in both daily wear and extended wear lenses.

  Even though bifocal contact lenses are convenient, they don't work for everyone. Getting the right bifocal lenses may take some experimenting. Follow your eye care provider's recommendations about which types of bifocal contacts to try, and allow a reasonable trial period before you decide if they will work for you.

Reviewed for medical accuracy by faculty at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins. Web site: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/

Developed by RelayHealth.
Published by RelayHealth.
© 2009 RelayHealth and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.