Presbyopia, which is always a problem for people over 40, is neither a condition nor a disease. It is part of the natural ageing process of the eye’s natural lens as it begins to lose its focusing flexibility.
The core symptom of presbyopia is poor near vision. Until recently there was actually no reliable or safe way to correct it. Today though, there are two revolutionary ways to deal with presbyopia, and both innovative methods are opted for by many specialised centers in dealing with patients throughout Greece.
One option is an outpatient procedure that only takes a few minutes. Eye-drop anesthesia creates a pain-free procedure and a femtosecond laser is used to place a tiny lens in the cornea of one of the eyes. The results are immediate and the patient can return to work the day after.
A second method of managing presbyopia in people over 40 involves laser correction for the non-dominant eye so that upon the end of treatment one eye can clearly see near and the other far.
Still, nowadays, for people over 50 there are alternative, state-of-the-art, ways to improve vision, primarily thanks to the insertion of multifocal intraocular or, else, progressive lenses.
Every year in Europe over 3 million surgical procedures are performed on patients with visually significant cataract and intraocular lens (IOL) implantation helps correct presbyopia in most people who get poor near vision post-surgery and need reading glasses. The majority of IOLs help correct vision to a certain distance. And, multifocal (trifocal) IOLs are so technologically advanced they can fix near, far and intermediate vision, restoring it fully.
The aforementioned lenses have been designed to simulate young eye vision and help patients adjust more naturally to their visual needs. Subsequently, it is easier for them to proceed with their daily routine and to seamlessly perform those everyday tasks that require, not only far and near but also, intermediate vision (as is the case of pc users), eliminating the need for glasses for good vision at any distance whatsoever.
Trifocal intraocular lenses are ideal for adults, with or without presbyopia, wishing to both eliminate the use of spectacles and/or lenses altogether, and to have good near, far and intermediate vision. Your eye doctor will first run a full check to ensure there are no pathological conditions involved, and then inform you about this procedure that helps achieve true spectacle independence, should your reading glasses really bother you.
In our center we have available a new device of FEMTO cataract ( FEMTO LDV Z8) which enables us to perform important stages of cataract extraction with UpToDate technology and precision
Thousands such operations are performed in Greece each year. The high level of expertise and training of Greek eye doctors working in the field of refractive surgery coupled with the modern technology all specialised eye clinics possess should be reason enough to make patients feel at ease about having refractive defects corrected.
Ioannis Datseris, MD, PhD, FEBO
Eye surgeon
OMMA Ophthalmological Institute of Athens