Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to use laser eye surgery to correct presbyopia.

LASIK eye surgery is usually used to correct either long or short sightedness. It works by sculpting the cornea and changing its shape, so that light focuses accurately on the retina, enabling you to see clearly.

However, with presbyopia, if both eyes are corrected for distance vision, the near vision remains a problem. So instead, our London eye surgeon adjusts the dominant eye for distance and the non-dominant eye for reading and near vision. This treatment is called blended vision.

The brain takes a short while to adjust to the eyes having different focal distances, but once it does, most people don’t even notice the difference. The procedure is reversible in that the near distance eye can simply be fully corrected for perfect distance vision in the rare instance of intolerance to blended vision.

OCL surgeons also perform Presbymax laser vision correction which is a sophisticated multifocal laser treatment only available on the Schwind Amaris laser.

Nearly everyone over the age of forty has some degree of long-sightedness. Long sightedness that develops in ones 40s is called presbyopia and occurs because the lens of the eye becomes less flexible with age.

The eye sees by allowing light to pass through the lens and focus on the retina. To see at close range, we need the lens of our eye to be flexible enough to change to a rounder shape so that light is focused sharply on the retina.

However, as we get older, the proteins within the lens stiffen and become less flexible, making it more difficult for us to read and see near objects clearly.

Where laser eye surgery is not suitable, refractive lens exchange, also known as permanent lens replacement, may be the most appropriate method for correcting presbyopia.

During refractive lens exchange, the natural lens is replaced with a new, customised lens which corrects your prescription. The steps of this surgery are identical to cataract surgery.

A small incision is made and the natural lens is removed using a sophisticated ultrasound probe. OCL surgeons are able to perform this surgery incredibly precisely using the latest technology including the Zeimer Z8 femtosecond laser for lens surgery and the Haag-Streit Lenstar Hill-RBF artificial intelligence lens calculator and Zeiss Lumera Callisto assisted microscope system for perfect lens alignment.

The synthetic lens can be either mono-focal or multifocal depending on individual requirements.