Reading glasses-why do we need them?

Reading glasses are one of the most frustrating additions to our wardrobe that you can think of! They are one of the solutions to the only disease that affects 100% of the human population, "presbyopia". And to add insult to injury, that word means "aging vision"! Everyone eventually realizes that they cannot see well when they bring things close to their eyes, and begin to hold objects and reading material further away to see them clearly. The only problem is that, eventually, our arms are not long enough and the print on the page is too small if we hold things too far away.

Most people have heard of over-the-counter readers, or drug store readers. These actually work very well for most people to bring things back into focus. If a person is already wearing glasses, bifocals can be made with the reading portion in the bottom part of the lenses. Contact lens wearers may choose monovision contacts, where one eye is corrected for near and one for distance, or multifocal lenses, in which many focal distances are built into the same contact lens. Monovision LASIK is also possible, and many successful monovision patients go this route when the have surgery.

Another surgical alternative is ReLEx surgery. ReLEx stands for Refractive Lens Exchange. In this surgery, the natural lens is removed from the eye, and replaced with a lens implant that can give all points of focus. The advantage over monovision is that both eyes are seeing the same image at the same time. More info is available at www.2020vision.com