LASIK for Presbyopia? Yes, it’s about time!
LASIK Surgery for treatment of Presbyopia in patients from Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Roxboro areas
Yes, presbyopia is about time, the passing of time, about 40 years of it, which causes the condition. While people wanting LASIK treatment for presbyopia may not be overly enthusiastic about how the condition gets its name, the source is at least visually interesting: PRESBUS. It’s Greek, and the Latin translation is senex, which leads us to the English word sen— I’m going to stop right here because we can see where this is going, and the meaning of the word isn’t…we just care about how to treat presbyopia, Yes? With laser vision correction!
Laser vision correction for presbyopia was a long time in coming to the patiently awaiting…patients. But we should always be grateful for clinical trials, however long it takes to see if an experimental procedure is actually going to work. Remember the discovery and innovation of the excimer laser for LASIK itself?—which turned out to be miraculous, but not until after the required due diligence of testing, testing, testing, and more testing! Indeed, it is the beloved excimer laser which treats presbyopia.
So, as you can imagine, millions of people are having their 40th birthday celebration as I write (as you read!), and many many more people are beyond that milestone—all needing correction for presbyopia! So with a demand like this, let’s get the LASIK technology ramped up!
But presbyopia is a tricky condition, at least to explain. First of all, presbyopia is not farsightedness, although both conditions are traditionally corrected by reading glasses. The difference is, while presbyopia causes a person to experience a loss of near vision, the same person might also be nearsighted. Capisce? (I’m glad you understand!)
So the laser-vision-correction situation is the same with presbyopia as with nearsightedness: LASIK will reshape the front surface of the eye, or cornea.
Thus far, most presbyopia LASIK patients have opted for what is called “mono-vision” LASIK, which means that one eye is LASIK-corrected in the normal way for nearsightedness, so the person has clear distance vision—in one eye. The other eye may remain untreated, or intentionally corrected to make it slightly more nearsighted if doing so will reduce the person’s need for reading glasses.
In this way, the person will rely on one eye for distance vision, such as for driving, and use the other eye for reading. While it may sound like using only one eye at a time depending on the vision distance, people usually adapt in a relatively short period of time and mono-vision feels natural—and better, because they are then much less dependent on reading glasses.
Prospective presbyopia LASIK patients should also ask their eye surgeon about other treatments such as a lifestyle lens ReStor or Crystalens for correcting all ranges of vision. This procedure is referred to as a “clear lens exchange” and is performed like a cataract surgery.
So what do they say, you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy…now that maxim seems more difficult to explain than presbyopia! But it seems now more and more they can take the presbyopia out of the boy…or girl…
