subject: How Old Is Too Old And How Young Is Too Young To Have Laser Eye Treatment? [print this page] For laser eye treatment to become successful, patients should be in the right age range. Complications may arise should individuals undergo laser eye treatment when they are either too young or too old.
Too Young
The typical trend when it comes to spectacle wear for short sightedness is requiring your earliest prescription in the early teens. This is generally found as nearsighted school-aged children will have problem seeing the board at school. The eyes are no exception to the abrupt changes that happen along with the rest of the body during teenage years. These changes will also mean changes to their eyeglasses, as they would have to find up-to-date ones that will correspond their Rx, which happens every year.
Unstable prescriptions won't do well with laser eye treatment because spectacles may be needed again almost immediately after surgery. Ophthalmologists urge that eyesight be static for at least a year before having operation. Having a static prescription for a minimum of two years is what most people at times wait for to be sure that eyeglasses will not be needed after the surgery.
For nearsightedness, stabilization commonly occurs in the late 20s to early 30s. This is not the case for all prescriptions and your optometrist will have kept past records of your eyes and be able to instruct you if you are suited for laser eye treatment.
Too Old
Presbyopia is defined as the crystalline lens within the eye hardening. Because of this, seeing becomes unmanageable as changing the focus becomes a difficulty which many folks find uncomfortable. This is a normal adjustment and occurs in the mid-40s. Optometrists usually prescribe reading glasses, bifocals, or multifocal eyeglasses to facilitate with this situation.
Presbyopia can also be corrected with contact lenses. The two types of contact lenses to correct this are monovision and multifocal lenses.
Presbyopia makes a complicated situation for laser eye treatment. To see clearly in the distance, shortsighted people can opt for refractive surgery. After the procedure, reading glasses would be necessary, however, for those with presbyopia. Because people often expect to be free from wearing eyeglasses after having laser eye operation, this outcome becomes rather disappointing.
Monovision laser eye surgery is an alternative for this situation. This is a process in which one eye is treated for clear distance vision and the other for clear near vision. As you can picture, the variation between the two eyes can be fairly umcomfortable and not everyone will adapt to this. Prior to monovision laser eye treatment, the ophthalmologist will first check if monovision contact lenses would be successful.
A new laser eye treatment method is PresbyLasik, wherein the front of the eye is molded so that multiple powers are produced on the front surface. This allows you to see both distance and near simultaneously in both eyes. Even so, you may still need reading glasses after this for very fine details up close.
Other eye conditions are more normal when you're older. These eye diseases include glaucoma, cataract,a nd macular degeneration - all of which interfere with sight. Before laser eye treatment occurs, all these eye diseases must first be solved.
To see if you're fitting for laser eye correction, see your optometrist. A thorough observation, a customized recommendation, and discussion of expected results will be included for anyone who talks to an optometrist.
