Is LASIK a Good Way to Correct Presbyopia?

LASIK or PRK are both good options for treating presbyopia, under the right circumstances, and as long as the patient realizes that it is not a long-term cure.  When using "monovision", the dominant eye is set for distance and the nondominant eye is set for near.  It is not tolerated by everyone, and I usually recommend a contact lens trial preoperatively to ensure that the patient will be happy after the surgery. 

Patients also need to realize that while this may treat them for the present and for the next few years, they may become more presbyopic over time. 

Lastly, cataracts should be ruled out, since it may be more prudent to have a refractive lens exchange.  This entails removal of a lens that is not quite visually significant, but might cause problems in the future.  A premium IOL may be placed at the time of surgery to help see at near and distance, or the IOLs can be set for monovision.

If you are over 40 and your arms are not long enough, you may have a condition known as presbyopia.  LASIK is a terrific procedure to treat this condition!  In blended vision, one eye is fully corrected to treat for the distance, while the other eye is partially treated for near.  When both eyes are open, distance and near vision is excellent. A small prescription for glasses can be given to improve one's night time driving in poor conditions such as fog.

In my experience about half of all people enjoy monovision.  In other words when demonstrating good distance vision in one eye and good near vision in the other eyes, those that tolerate this situation find little disturbance in their distance vision.  Those that do find that a disparity in images between the two eyes are not good candidates for monovision.  If an individual tolerates monovision, I encourage people to try it with LASIK.  I had good vision for distance in both eyes and had my left eye treated for near.  I now have normal vision for distance in my right eye and read with my left.  It works well for me and others.  This is easily demonstrated in a preoperative evaluation.