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Presbyopia is a condition that affects most people around the ages of 40 to 45. A normal eye under this age effectively adjusts its focus from distance to near and everything in between. The eye ages along with the rest of the body. Just as some people get gray or white hair, lose their hair or get wrinkles, the lens inside the eye ages and loses its elasticity.
When you look at something 20 feet or more away, the lens is relaxed. As you start to look at objects closer than 20 feet, the lens becomes thicker and more rounded, thus increasing the power that the eye uses to see. It reaches its full power when you look at something very close to your face. When you reach 40 to 45 years of age, the lens has lost enough elasticity so it no longer achieves enough power for reading comfortably. This condition continues to change until about the age of 55 to 60.
Presbyopia can be corrected with bifocals or reading glasses. For those who are nearsighted, the removal of glasses may allow one to use their myopia to read comfortably.
Some people have avoided reading glasses for many years, however, through a technique called monovision. This is an option for people with presbyopia where the two eyes are adjusted to have slightly different focusing points. Monovision can be achieved by wearing a set of contact lenses which will enable them to see close up with one eye and at a distance with the other eye.
Today, many patients choose to achieve monovision either with laser vision correction or conductive keratoplasty (CK), a new, minimally invasive, non-laser vision correction procedure.
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