Need Reading Glasses? It Might Be Presbyopia.
How Would You Describe Your Eyesight?
- Text messages, menus, labels and magazines are blurry
- Holding things far away makes it easier to read
- Difficult to read in low light environments
- Your eyes become fatigued, leading to headaches or eyestrain
We May Have a Solution!
- RLE (Refractive Lens Exchange)
It happens to most people over age 40: little by little, words on a page or on your smart phone become increasingly difficult to read. Ultimately, a friend or family member may suggest you put on their reading glasses and you are amazed at how poor your vision has become.
This is called presbyopia. It’s not an eye disease and you did nothing wrong to make this condition happen to your vision. It’s simply a fact of growing older for most people.
What is Presbyopia?
Presbyopia is the medical term for the stiffening of the lenses inside your eyes. When you are young, your eye lenses are flexible and can change at a whim to focus on things up close or far away. But as your eyes age, just like your skin and other parts of your body, your lenses can lose elasticity and your eye muscles are no longer able to help the lenses flex. This can occur even if you’ve had great eyesight in the past.
Reading glasses or bifocals are typically the first line of defense when you start realizing you need help seeing clearly up close. However, these vision aids can have a negative connotation attached to them – especially if you are concerned about looking older.
Alternatives to Reading Glasses & Bifocals
If you do not have an interest in wearing reading glasses or bifocals, there are options to correct presbyopia. At The Wright Eye Center, our team performs Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE) in Colorado Springs to improve reading vision for people over age 40. RLE is very similar to cataract surgery but you do not have to have cataracts to get it done. As an added bonus, RLE could even prevent you from getting cataracts in the future!
During RLE, your eye lens is gently removed from your eye. Then a pre-determined replacement lens is inserted. This is called an Intraocular Lens (IOL), an artificial lens that will be more flexible than your aging lens. We can discuss all of the different types of IOLs available and which one(s) might be right for your unique vision challenges.
Our doctors have performed thousands of lens procedures, helping many patients enjoy visual freedom. Contact us today to schedule a no-obligation, free RLE Consultation in Colorado Springs to find out if this procedure might be right for you!
