I need two different prescriptions to see far away and up close – what are my options in contact lenses?
After your Jenks Eye Exam, if you need two different prescriptions to see far away and up close and wear contact lenses, there are a few options available for you to allow you to have the best overall vision possible.
Reading Glasses Over Contact Lenses
The first option available is to wear the contact lenses to correct your distance vision, and wear reading glasses over the top of the contact lenses when you need to see up close. This option may be best for patients who do very little near work throughout the day. A downfall to this option is that patients have to keep up with their reading glasses and slide them on and off when going from distance work to near work. Another downfall is that the dashboard of the car may be slightly blurry with this options verses other options since the dashboard usually sits at an intermediate distance.
Monovision Contact Lenses
What is monovision? Monovision contact lenses are where your dominant eye is corrected to see clearly in the distance, and your non-dominant eye is corrected to see clearly up close. This allows patients freedom from constantly having to find their reading glasses to do their near work. This wearing style takes some time to get used to because the brain has to adapt to each eye being corrected to see different distances, however, many patients are very successful with this wearing option.
Multifocal Contact Lenses
Multifocal contact lenses are those where both of your eyes are corrected to see clearly for far away vision, intermediate vision, and near vision. These lenses use a special design that allows both eyes to work together to see at all distances.
When you are fit with a monovision or multifocal contact lens at Insight Eyecare, we expect you to be able to do about 80% of your day comfortably in the contact lenses and without feeling that you need to reach for reading glasses. For very tiny print, or if you are going to sit for a long period of time and read, you may find that it is more comfortable to grab a pair of reading glasses to ease the eyes.
If you are interested in exploring your options in contact lenses, give us a call at 918-296-3937! We can perform your Jenks Eye Exam and discuss which option is best for you!