Presbyopia or eyestrain is the physiological loss of the eye’s ability to focus, which degenerates with age. The crystalline lens focuses with movements, and the muscle in charge of doing so becomes exhausted. This leads to the inability to focus on objects at a certain distance. It appears around 40 years of age and progresses until 65 years of age.
What are the symptoms of presbyopia or eyestrain?
The main symptom is muscular exhaustion, resulting in reading problems. In patients without distance glasses defect it usually occurs at 40 years of age and it becomes maximum at 55 years of age. To compensate for it, glasses must be put on. In myopes it is curious, since the patient sees well up close but poorly at a distance, so he/she starts to take off the distance glasses to see well up close. In hyperopes the problem comes before the age of 40. They start with a problem in the distance, which is accentuated in the near vision after 36 years of age.
What is the treatment?
Vitamin complexes have been tried to treat it, but without results. The treatment is to correct the focusing defect with glasses. When diopters are lost, the glasses allow reading. Between 42 and 65 years of age, the prescription must be increased.
Surgical treatments have been available for the last decade: laser and diffractive intraocular lens implantation. Laser is not always useful or definitive. It consists of trying to achieve mono vision, leaving one eye myopic for near vision and the dominant eye for distance vision. In intraocular lenses, on the other hand, the incompetent crystalline lens is removed and the lens is implanted. Although it is not useful in all cases, with aberrometry and preoperative, satisfaction is high and the results are definitive. However, the latest generation of multifocal or trifocal lenses are now the alternative to intraocular lenses, as they allow correct distance, near and intermediate vision (widely used for focusing on computers).