Monovision

Do you want to see far away and read with less reliance on glasses?

Monovision may be your best surgery option.
One choice for refractive surgery is monovision, which is surgically correcting one eye for distance vision and the other for viewing near objects. This option is primarily for patients who are at least 40 years old, who need corrective lenses for distance vision and have difficulty seeing well enough with their distance correction lenses in place to read.

First, it is important to understand that the need for reading glasses is caused by presbyopia, which is when the lens inside your eye has trouble accommodating (or focusing) from far to near vision with your distance correction in place. The younger the patient is, the easier it is for the lens to focus. As we enter our early forties, most of us develop presbyopia as our lenses lose flexibility.

The monovision option may provide the ability to see far away and read close up without dependency on reading glasses (but you may want to use them as an aid occasionally).

How Does Monovision work?
In a typical non-monovision LASIK procedure, the surgeon wants distance as close to perfect as possible in both eyes. In a monovision case, the physician intentionally corrects the non-dominant eye for near vision, while correcting the dominant eye as close to perfect for distance as possible.

The result is that the patient uses the dominant eye mostly for distance vision and the non-dominant eye mostly for close-up vision. When both the eyes work together, the brain naturally selects the clearer vision, and monovision makes it possible to repeatedly change the range of focus without constantly having to remove or add corrective lenses.

For some patients, there is an initial adjustment period to get used to to this new vision. Others adjust immediately. Prior to surgery we recommend that you use contact lenses to simulate monovision.