Presbyopia
At Alliance Vision Institute, we understand that presbyopia can be incredibly frustrating for our patients from the Fort Worth, Dallas, and the DFW areas. While reading glasses may temporarily help, many patients find them to be cumbersome, unattractive, or inconvenient. We offer more permanent solutions for presbyopia that can help you reduce or eliminate dependence on reading glasses.
What is Presbyopia?
Symptoms of Presbyopia
People begin to see signs of presbyopia in their early 40s. Symptoms of presbyopia can be worse when a person is tired or in low lighting, and typically include:
- Blurred vision when reading at a normal distance
- Needing to hold objects further from the face to read them clearly
- Trouble reading small print
- Headaches
- Eye strain
Who Gets Presbyopia?
Presbyopia happens to everyone. However, certain people may be more likely to develop near vision loss at an earlier age. Risk factors for premature presbyopia include:
- Farsightedness (hyperopia)
- Diabetes
- Multiple sclerosis
- Cardiovascular disease
- Anemia
- Certain medications
- A previous eye injury
Presbyopia Treatment Options
Premium IOLs
For patients who would like to permanently improve their near vision, we offer lens replacement using premium intraocular lens implants (IOLs).
Lens replacement happens most frequently during cataract surgery, where the cloudy natural lens of the eye is removed and an IOL is put in its place. By customizing cataract surgery with the patient’s choice of premium IOLs, we can improve their vision at multiple ranges in addition to getting rid of the cataracts forever.
Because not every patient who wants to improve their vision has cataracts, we also offer an identical procedure called refractive lens exchange (RLE). Not only can patients achieve clearer vision at multiple ranges through refractive lens exchange, but by replacing the eye’s lens we can actually eliminate the chance that the patient will encounter cataracts in the future.
Learn More About Refractive Lens Exchange
Our patients are able to choose from a wide selection of premium IOLs, which can improve near vision, intermediate vision, distance vision, or any combination of those visual ranges. We also have a number of options designed specifically for patients with astigmatism.
Blended Vision/Monovision
Simply put, blended vision or monovision is a technique that corrects one eye for near vision and the other eye for distance vision. The brain learns to combine the images produced by both eyes, helping the patient see more clearly at a wider range. Many of our patients choose to improve their near vision through laser vision correction such as LASIK or PRK with blended vision/monovision.