LASIK for Farsightedness, Nearsightedness and Reading Vision Improvement

Are you over age 40 and having a hard time to read small print with your glasses or contacts? LASIK can help with that.

Can LASIK Improve Reading Vision, Farsightedness and Nearsightedness?

Modern LASIK surgery can correct reading vision problems caused by presbyopia with a technique called monovision — where the LASIK surgeon fully corrects the refractive errors in one eye and deliberately leaves the other eye slightly nearsighted. The result: the fully corrected eye sees distant items very plainly, and the nearsighted eye offers sharper near vision without reading glasses.

If you are considering this choice, it’s frequently smart to first try monovision with contact lenses for a brief period to make sure you can adapt to the monovision experience before continuing with monovision LASIK.

Another option is multifocal LASIK — a procedure where the laser reshapes the surface area of the eye in a style that imitates the appearance of bifocal or multifocal contact lenses. Multifocal LASIK can lower the requirement for reading glasses, but there’s an increased risk of glare and halos after this procedure, which might be hard to reverse.

Monovision LASIK is one method to improve reading vision. A corneal inlay is another.

Maybe an even much better presbyopia correction surgery than monovision LASIK or multifocal LASIK is corneal inlay surgery.

In this procedure, a laser is used to produce a small pocket in the center of the cornea of one eye, and a small optical device (a corneal inlay or corneal implant) is then placed in this pocket, which self-seals.

See also: LASIK Eye Surgery Cost

The corneal implant boosts depth of focus in the dealt with eye — improving near vision without any substantial loss of distance vision. (This is its advantage over monovision LASIK, which improves near vision however causes obvious loss of clearness of range vision in the “near” eye.)

FDA-approved corneal inlays used by refractive surgeons in the United States to improve reading vision consist of the Kamra inlay (AcuFocus) and the Raindrop Near Vision Inlay (Revision Optics). Another device — the Presbia Flexivue Microlens (Presbia) — has actually received the CE mark allowing the lens to be commercially available across Europe, but it is not yet FDA authorized for use in the United States.

A corneal inlay procedure can be performed for individuals who have best range vision without corrective lenses and simply require help with presbyopia-related reading vision issues. Or it can be performed a long time after LASIK for individuals who likewise require vision correction for nearsightedness, farsightedness, and/or astigmatism.