News » Monovision LASIK popular and effective for correction of presbyopia
Patients who are in their mid-40s and older have a decision to make when having LASIK or other types of refractive surgery, including PRK and LASEK, that younger patients don't need to worry about. Because they already have presbyopia and need a bifocal correction (or are very close to that age), patients 45 and older must decide whether to have both eyes fully corrected for good distance vision, or to have a monovision correction - where one eye is fully corrected for distance vision and the other eye is intentionally left mildly nearsighted for better near vision. When both eyes fully corrected for distance vision (called bilateral distance correction), most patients 45 and older will need to wear reading glasses for reading and other close-up tasks. With monovision, these patients will be less dependent on reading glasses, but may have to accept some compromises in their distance vision. For certain distance vision tasks, like driving at night, eyeglasses may be required for greater clarity, comfort and safety.
Patients prefer monovision
Researchers at the University of California's Department of Ophthalmology in Irvine, California recently conducted a study of 284 consecutively-treated LASIK patients 45 years of age and older to ascertain their preference of bilateral distance correction vs. monovision and to evaluate the satisfaction of patients who receive a monovision LASIK correction. All LASIK treatments performed in the study were conventional (not wavefront-guided) procedures.
Traditionally, a person's dominant sighting eye (determined by a number of simple tests) is the eye that is given the distance correction. And while this protocol was followed for 85 percent of patients receiving a monovision correction in this study, those patients who selected their dominant eye for near vision correction had similar success rates.
Conclusions
Based on the results of the study, the researchers concluded that monovision LASIK "represents a viable and increasingly popular method of correcting presbyopic and pre-presbyopic patients considering refractive surgery."But they also point out that monovision patients have a lower tolerance for residual refractive error and require a higher rate of enhancement surgery than patients who undergo bilateral distance correction LASIK.