What are Bifocal Contact Lenses?
You may need bifocal contact lenses if you have an eye condition called presbyopia. If you need to hold a book or newspaper away from your eyes to see the print you should be examined for presbyopia. The good news is that bifocal contact lenses can help correct this vision disorder and enable you to see clearly again.
Bifocal contact lenses can be prescribed in soft and rigid gas permeable lenses. Modern bifocals are also available in disposables or frequent use options making it easy to correct your vision with the ease of use of modern eye care alternatives. Disposable bifocal lenses have been available since 1999 and you can now also buy daily disposables. You throw them away each night and replace them with a fresh pair in the morning.
How do bifocal contact lenses work? They work in a similar way to bifocal spectacles. The lenses have two focusing powers on the same lens. One works to correct distance vision and the other to correct near vision. The lenses may be prescribed in the aspheric design with both corrections near the pupil or in a concentric design. Here the near correction is in the middle and the far on the outside. The translating design features near vision correction on the bottom.
Some types of bifocal contact lenses have two prescriptions - the distance vision on the top of the lens and the near vision at the bottom. Or they might have the different focusing corrections blended on different parts of the lens.
However, bifocal contact lenses are not suitable for everyone with presbyopia. Your eyes will take time to adjust to the contact lenses so it can adapt to the different focusing powers. This means that depending on your eye it can take a variable amount of time to determine if the lens is going to work for you. Bifocal lenses are not effective in all cases of presbyopia.
If bifocal contact lenses don't work for you, your doctor may prescribe 'monovision' as an alternative option. This is where you wear a single contact lens with one power to correct distance vision and another lens to correct near vision. The distance vision correction lens is usually worn in the dominant eye.
Surprisingly this form of vision correction does work very well for many people. Over time the way the eyes are focusing to accommodate the visual deficit is not even noticed. Any soft contact lens can be prescribed for monovision, even disposable options. If you don't find a solution with bifocal contact lenses ask your doctor about monovision options.
