Some people need to start wearing glasses at a young age to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism while others can cruise through life without wearing glasses at all. However, regardless of how clear your eyes are when you are younger, by the time you hit age 40, your vision may begin to change – even if you’ve had vision correction surgery such as LASIK or PRK.

Why Can’t You Read Up-Close?

The condition is called presbyopia. This is an age-related vision change that occurs when the lenses of your eyes start to lose their flexibility. As the lenses become gradually stiffer, it becomes increasingly difficult for the lenses to focus on things up-close. If you’re over age 40, you might notice that words on text messages, menus, medicine bottles, etc., are blurry – especially in low light situations. This is because your lenses are not able to accommodate (adjust) to focus up-close. Presbyopia can also cause you to have headaches and eye strain. 

Presbyopia is different from farsightedness (blurry up-close vision). Farsightedness has to do with the shape of your cornea while presbyopia affects the eye lens. Wearing over-the-counter or prescription reading glasses can allow you to see clearly up-close. You may be able to start wearing a very low strength: +1.00 or +1.25. As your lenses continue to lose more flexibility, you may need to graduate up to a strength of +2.75 or higher.

Alternative to Reading Glasses: Monovision LASIK

Although they do work, reading glasses are not always welcomed with open eyes. Some people are embarrassed to put them on in social situations. And it can be quite annoying if you need to have them stashed all over your house, at work and in the car.  

At Azul Vision, we offer monovision LASIK as a way to restore up-close vision. Here’s how the process can work:

• We use a laser on your non-dominate eye to correct the shape of your cornea so you can see up-close.
• We assess the vision in your dominate eye. If you have clear vision distance in that eye, no further treatment may be necessary. If your distance vision is blurry, we may need to use a laser to correct that eye so you have clear distance vision.   

The outcome is that you will have one eye that can see up-close clearly while the other eye has clear distance vision. The eyes work together to give you a full range of clear vision.

It’s important to give monovision a test drive before you have the procedure to make sure you can adapt to this type of eyesight. We can fit you for prescription contact lenses to wear for a week or two so you can experience what it would feel like to have monovision. Your eyes and brain need time to adjust.

As with any type of vision procedure, monovision LASIK is not for everyone. During a Consultation, our team will assess your eye health to determine if we think monovision LASIK would be helpful. You can always expect to receive honest information from our team. Then you can decide if you want to proceed.  

Find out if Monovision LASIK is right for you.

Schedule a Consultation today!