Eye Care Article

Multifocal Contact Lenses

Contact Lens for Presbyopia

Have you noticed that you need to hold your phone or reading material a bit farther than before to see clearly?

Now, you need to bring a pair of readers with you wherever you go, or you would not be able to see the ingredient listed on the canned food! That is actually a sign of presbyopia, a.k.a. age-related long-sightedness. Can presbyopia be cured? Just as we cannot reverse ageing, it is not possible to cure presbyopia at the moment. However, for those who are not used to wearing glasses or have an active lifestyle, we have a solution for you – multifocal contact lenses!

Multifocal contact lenses contain multiple prescription within a single lens allowing you to see clearly at distance, intermediate and near. The innovative designs in multifocal contact lenses offer the best of both worlds: no glasses, good vision for far (sometimes intermediate) and near.

How do multifocal contact lenses work?

When you look at the prescription of your multifocal contact lenses, it may look almost similar to your regular contact lens prescription, as it also includes your base curve, diameter, cylinder and axis. The only difference that you will notice on the prescription is the addition of “ADD”, they come in low, medium, and high values. “ADD” refers to the amount of “magnifying” power needed for your near vision; it is always a plus power, e.g., +1.75. Multifocal contact lenses often bundle the ADD amounts into three groups: low, medium or high. Low ADD is a number up to + 1.25, medium, is an ADD between +1.50 and +2.00, and high is an ADD of +2.25 up to +2.50.

Vision Designs in Multifocal Contact Lenses

Multifocal contact lenses come from many different manufacturers, and each is designed slightly differently. Soft contact lenses move and rotate as your eyes move or blink. Hence the design is not like typical bifocal with distance power on top and near power at the bottom. Instead, they are designed with a small circular area at the center of the lens that contains the bifocal power. This is due to physiological constriction of the pupil when seeing close-up objects.

Concentric Design

Distance power is typically located at the center of the lens (primary viewing zone), surrounded by concentric rings of distance and near powers. This is regarded as “centre-distance design”. Some have “centre-near design”, where near power is at the centre; this is normally worn on the non-dominant eye while “centre-distance lens” is worn on the dominant eye for optimal visual outcome.

Aspheric Design

Instead of having discrete rings of distance and near powers as in concentric design, power gradually changes from distance to intermediate to near (or near to distance) from center of the lens to the periphery. The gradual transition of power is designed somewhat like progressive eyeglasses.

Expectations on Multifocal Contact Lenses

While you have multiple focal powers in one lens, what is the visual outcome like?

Since you are looking through a lens with twopolarising power (one for far and another for near), it will not produce a perfectly clear image at first when looking at a faraway object. Yes, it is normal! Hence, you need to try them for a few days to adapt; your brain is smart enough to compensate for different image quality!

Many people quit too early because they expect their vision to be equally clear as it was with their bifocal glasses. Contact lenses may never be equally as clear as glasses, but with time and patience, many people are able to function throughout the day without problems.

You would be a good candidate if you:

– are very motivated to function without glasses,

– play sports or do a lot of outdoor activities,

– work as, e.g., an electrician, mechanic or do a lot of computer work, which you need to see up close yet cannot look down through a pair of glasses all the time!

– currently use contact lenses but can no longer see things near.

Are you a good candidate for multifocal lenses?

Fret not! If your expectations are reasonable, you will make a better candidate. Some of the popular multifocal brands are:

While they seem to be comparable among each other, they may fit your eyes differently. Therefore, it is important to have a fitting assessment before multifocal contact lenses are prescribed.

Is wearing multifocal contact lenses my only option if I don’t want to wear glasses?

Surely not! If you still do not like the fitting of multifocal contact lenses, we can still try fitting you with monovision contact lenses! In monovision, your dominant eye will be fully corrected for far whereas your non-dominant eye will be corrected to a point where you can manage your near work comfortably.

While this is an alternative to multifocal contact lenses, there are several pros and cons to this method of correction.

Similar to the multifocal contact lenses, the adaptation to wearing monovision lenses can take one to two weeks. You may notice objects or print appearing shadowy at first, but with time, that will go away. It is crucial to give it a chance for at least a few weeks before giving up! Feeling confused about what you should opt for? No worries, talk to us about your concern and lifestyle, and let us get you an option that is tailored to your very own visual needs!

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