Reading without glasses...again!

A great number of us will use glasses for reading after age 45. This can be a rude awakening when no glasses were ever needed before. The medical term for this condition is presbyopia.

There are two new surgical procedures to help you read without glasses. They are very different procedures. Conductive keratoplasty, (CK) was approved by the FDA last year to improve reading vision. CK is a minimally invasive procedure, which is usually performed only on one eye. Energy is delivered to the peripheral cornea through a device with a tip, thinner than a strand of human hair. Usually 8 or 16 spots are placed in the cornea during a treatment. A small burn is created at each spot around the cornea. You get some discomfort and healing is rapid. As these treatment spots heal, they contract, increasing the curvature of the central cornea. This improves your near vision. There usually is a change in the distance vision in the treated eye. Fortunately, most people gain much more vision up close than they lose in the distance. Eye drops are all that is necessary after this in-office procedure. The eye that is treated to improve itsí near vision typically retains a good amount of distance vision.

The newest procedure to improve near vision, the Crystalens, corrects distance, intermediate, and near vision at the same time. The Crystalens is an intraocular lens implant. Lens implants have been used after cataract surgery for decades. The Crystalens is a newly designed lens implant, which changes position in the eye with the same muscles that allow younger individuals to change focus, and read.

There is great advantage in replacing the natural lens, which has hardened over time, and lost the ability to change focus, with a lens implant that uses the natural focusing mechanisms of the eye to produce a full range of vision. Intraocular procedures have more risks, but many of us are going to need intraocular procedures to remove cataracts over time. This procedure will replace the standard cataract surgery and give a full range of vision to many of us.

Technologies keep progressing to make eye surgery safer and more effective. These two new procedures, CK and Crystalens, have been approved to improve near vision. There is a tremendous need for these procedures and these two different technologies will offer many of us the chance to read without glasses, again