Presbyopia is the gradual loss of your eyes’ ability to focus on near objects. It is a natural, age related process that usually becomes noticeable in your early to mid-40s and continues to increase until around age 65 or 70 years of age.
You may become aware of this condition when you start holding books and newspapers at an arm’s length to be able to read them. If you are nearsighted (myopic), you might temporarily manage to continue reading if you read without using your distant glasses.
A routine eye consultation can confirm this diagnosis.
You can correct the condition with nonprescription reading glasses or prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses. Surgery also may be an option for presbyopia.
About Presbyopia and LASIK
After 40 years, we all need to use reading glasses. In older people who have not had LASIK done and still need to use numbers for distant work, these are then used as ‘Bi focals’ or ‘verifocals’. Reading glasses are an age related issue and no one is exempt from it.
There is no permanent treatment by laser for this, although some doctors advertise ‘presbyopic LASIK’, which is a laser treatment needing to be repeated every 1 or 1.5 years and is still in its infancy, hence not advocated by Dr Anand Shroff, our LASIK expert and Corneal surgeon.
Correcting Presbyopia with Intra ocular lens implant surgery
There is one way to avoid reading numbers and also correct myopia (minus numbers for distance), which is by a surgery using implants or accomodative (wavefront lenses), which may be a good option for older age groups.
In accomodative or multifocal implants, the natural lens of your eye is replaced, and hence there is no chance of any cataract in the future.
This surgery is also called PRELEX, which can be performed in some cases for presbyopia.
PRELEX stands for PREsbyopic Lens EXchange. It involves removing your old, inflexible natural lens and replacing it with an artificial one. The operation is performed under local anaesthetic, so you are kept awake but the eye is numbed. (ZThis is similar to the Artificial lenses which are quite often put in after cataract surgery, only the lenses used are more advanced helping you see in all focuses.)
It is only a detailed eye examination + understanding what kind of work you do (whether more distant related or computers etc, whether you drive a lot at night etc), that we help you make an nformed decision regarding the most suitable treatment for you.