What is Presbyopia?

Presbyopia, or age-related farsightedness, is an advancing loss of the eye's capacity to focus due to the thickening and loss of flexibility of the lens. Over the age of 40, the natural lens in everyone’s eyes becomes less flexible. This results in difficulty changing focus to near objects.  

Is Presbyopia Surgery Permanent?

Although there is no procedure to restore the flexibility of the natural lens, there are options to overcome this problem such as multifocal intraocular lenses (IOLs) or monovision.

What are my Presbyopia Treatment Options?

Monovision can be achieved with either LASIK, refractive lens exchange or cataract surgery whereas a multifocal result requires a refractive lens exchange or cataract surgery. Corrective procedures are performed with an excimer laser, implantable contact lens or a refractive lens exchange, and peripheral corneal incisions.

Your Eye & Laser Centre ophthalmologist will determine the appropriate vision correction technique for you.

Available treatments include:

LASIK (Laser-Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis)

Flap surgery (LASIK) creates a hinged piece of tissue with a controlled blade or precision femtosecond laser, and is returned to its original position. LASIK is a method of laser eye surgery performed by our specialists to correct the vision of people no longer wanting to wear glasses or contact lenses. Numbing drops are used and very little pain and discomfort is felt in the majority of our patients. LASIK reports a 96% success rate.

RLE (Refractive Lens Exchange)

Refractive lens exchange (RLE) replaces the clear natural lens with an implant to achieve sharper focus, reducing the need for corrective lenses. The artificial lens is carefully selected by the surgeon to ensure an optimal result. Multifocal lenses or a monovision setup can be used to correct both distance and reading vision.

Cataract Surgery

Creating corneal incisions to allow access to the lens, removing the anterior capsule of the lens, fragmenting the cataract and creating peripheral corneal incisions to reduce astigmatism.

Multifocal and Extended Range of Vision Intraocular Lenses (IOLs)

Another option to correct presbyopia is the use of multifocal lens implants. Patients may benefit from various contact lens designs that allow the eye to focus effortlessly on their reading material. Presbyopia correcting IOL implants are also able to correct distance vision and astigmatism after cataract surgery. The success rate for Tecnis Symfony Extended Range of Vision intraocular lens is high, with many patients eliminating the constant need for eyeglasses.

Monovision

Monovision is an option for people over 40 to allow for clear nearsighted vision. It involves focusing one eye perfectly for distance (usually your dominant eye) and leaving the other eye slightly short-sighted (meaning it is focused well for near objects). Our brains are very good at processing this information and can achieve good distance and near vision like this.