You Have Your Prescription — Now What?
You can’t reverse presbyopia, but you can correct it. “If you don’t have issues with your distance vision, over-the-counter readers work well for most people,” says Dr. Di Meglio.
Once your eye doctor tells you what strength you need, she suggests going to the drugstore and trying out glasses by reading a magazine. “I tell my patients to first try the target strength that I suggest, but then also experiment with the strength above and below that to see what works best for them,” she says.
Nonprescription reading glasses from the drugstore or another source (such as an online eyeglasses store) won’t work for everyone, though. For example, if the close-up vision in one eye is very different from that of the other, you may need prescription glasses with different-strength lenses.
Additionally, people who already wear glasses or contact lenses for nearsightedness (myopia) or astigmatism may need prescription lenses to correct presbyopia. These might be bifocal, trifocal, or progressive glasses or multifocal contact lenses, says Di Meglio.
Other options for correcting presbyopia include:
- Monovision, in which contact lenses or refractive surgery correct one eye for near vision and the other for far vision.
- Corneal inlays, which are tiny devices implanted in the cornea (the outer layer in the front of the eye) to restore close-up vision.
- Prescription eye drops, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved to treat age-related farsightedness. They work by temporarily making the pupils smaller.
No matter how you ultimately proceed, the best first step you can take is to visit an ophthalmologist. Together you can agree on a plan to bring the blurry world that’s right in front of your face back into focus.
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