The two most common eye ailments are far and near sightedness, or, hyperopia and myopia.

Farsightedness / Hyperopia
If you can see objects at a distance clearly but have trouble focusing well on objects close up, you may be farsighted, what we call hypermetropia and hyperopia.

Farsightedness causes the eyes to exert extra effort to see close up, when reading, for example. After viewing nearby objects for an extended period, you may experience blurred vision, headaches and eyestrain. Children who are farsighted may find reading difficult or have eyestrain even though they pass normal vision screening tests.

Nearsightedness / Myopia
If you can see objects nearby with no problem, but reading road signs or making out the writing on the board at school is more difficult, you may be nearsighted. Myopia, in Greek means, “closed eyes,” which is what it looks like when we squint to see distant objects more clearly.

Correcting Vision
We’ve come a long way in helping people with poor vision. Besides glasses and contact lenses, laser procedures are also a possible treatment for nearsightedness in adults. They involve reshaping the cornea by removing a small amount of eye tissue, accomplished by using a highly focused laser beam on the surface of the eye.

Another option for treating nearsightedness is orthokeratology (ortho-k), also known as corneal refractive therapy. It is a non-surgical procedure that involves wearing a series of specially designed rigid contact lenses to gradually reshape the curvature of your cornea.

Contact lenses have evolved a great deal from their humble beginnings as hard specks of glass, to their current technologies using space age materials. Seattle Vision Clinic works closely with CIBA VISION® when fitting our patients wit h contact options, such as their AIR OPTIX® Contact Lens line shown below. They have many more lines to fit a wide range of factors.

To learn more, click on the image to open the CIBA VISION® site in a new window, and speak with Seattle Vision Clinic to find out what it means for your specific criteria.