What is far-sightedness?

What is far-sightedness? Your eye behaves like a camera. When light hits the cornea, which is the part of your eye where a contact lens would sit if you had to wear one, it bends the rays of light into the eye towards the lens. The lens makes the fine adjustment by refocusing further onto the retina. In your case, your cornea is a bit too flat, and so it’s not bending the rays effectively to the lens so the lens will fine focus it.

Symptoms of far-sightedness

Because of that flatness, the rays come into focus behind the retina instead of in front of it, and that gives you blurred vision. Some patients may also complain about eye strain. Depending on the extent of your far-sightedness, you may have blurred vision for near, intermediate or even far if your far-sightedness is extreme.

Initial treatment for far-sightedness

The treatment varies for far-sightedness. We would initially prescribe spectacles. What we’ll do is give you a plus lens which will strengthen the power of the eye and bring the focus back onto the retina. There is also the option of contact lenses. There is a whole variety of contact lenses of different materials and different sizes that we can choose for you. We would re-assess you further and determine which option is best for you.

Treatment of far-sightedness with an intraocular lens

Then there is the option of putting an intraocular lens inside your eye. It’s named a phakic lens because we place it inside your eye without taking out your natural lens. We set the lens in between the iris and your natural lens, and it’s a reasonably straight forward 50-minute procedure that we perform on an outpatient basis. You are awake but we numb the eye, and you feel very comfortable as we do it. Then there is the option of actually removing your natural lens and replacing it with what we call an intraocular lens.

Laser treatment for far-sightedness

Finally, there is the option of a laser, and there is a whole array of different laser systems that we use to reshape the cornea. In this case, the surgery aims to create the cornea into a more dome-shaped object to enhance its focusing mechanism.