Those With Blurry Close-Up Vision Get Some New Help

By Mark Whitten, MD

Squinting while texting? Always losing your reading glasses? An eye implant that takes about 10 minutes to put in place is the newest in a list of surgical repairs for the blurry close-up vision that is a bane of middle age. But who's really a good candidate to toss their specs?

Nearly everybody will experience presbyopia at some point, usually starting in the mid-40s. At first you may notice yourself holding restaurant menus at arm's length. Eventually, even in good light, reading becomes a blur.

How well you see has to do with how light is directed through the natural lens to the back of the eye. That lens stiffens with age, losing its ability to shift and bend light so that it becomes more difficult to focus close-up.

The usual options are magnifying drugstore reading glasses or, for people with other vision problems, bifocals, multifocal contact lenses or what's called monovision, correcting for distance vision in one eye and near vision in the other.

While surgery always carries some risk, corneal inlays that are implanted into the eye's clear front surface are getting attention because they're removable if necessary.

A gel-like device that looks like a miniature contact lens, the Raindrop is smaller than the eye of a needle. It's the first implant to treat presbyopia by changing the cornea's shape, making it steeper to alter how light passes through.

It's placed in only one eye; both eyes still see at a distance. Patients can test-wear a single contact lens to be sure they'll like the effect before choosing surgery.

Information obtained from an article by Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer, The Associated Press.