Video Transcription:
Myopia is a vision defect in which the eyeball is too long and its shape causes light to bend incorrectly and focus images in front of the retina instead of on it. Therefore, the patient’s vision is blurred from afar and as he approaches the object, the image improves. The improvement occurs at a point where he sees in focus that is inversely proportional to myopia. It can be 30cm, 20cm, 10cm, or 5cm away. As myopia increases, the far point (i.e. the point where the patient sees in focus without glasses) becomes ever closer.
To correct myopia it is necessary to put a minus lens. The nearsighted eye causes the light rays to diverge when they strike the retina and produces a blurry image. The minus lens can resolve this and can be put on a pair of glasses, in contact with the eye, or inside the eye. The eye’s natural crystalline lens can also be replaced and an artificial lens is put as replacement. The artificial lens corrects the relative defect of the natural crystalline lens and myopia itself.
Myopia is also linked to a whole series of ocular pathologies, therefore it is not only a visual defect but problems such as cataracts, glaucoma, retinal detachment, maculopathy can occur with greater risk. The myopic eye is an eye that is more predisposed to these pathologies. It is as if the nearsighted eye is three times the age of that of a normal eye, therefore a fifty-year-old person, nearsighted by 15 diopters, is as if has an eye of that of a 100-year-old. This is an example often given to patients to explain the degree of deterioration of the myopic eye.
The patient may ask, “Why is my nearsighted eye predisposed to having all this trouble”?
The answer is that it is as if the eye is much, much older than that of a normal eye of your age.
Myopia is a refractive error, where the light rays coming from an object are not being brought by the eye to a single focus on the retina to see images clearly (having an elongated eye or overly curved cornea). Myopia causes a blurred vision from afar while nearer vision is good. It is the most common eyesight problem in the world: only 25% of the population in Italy is affected. It often comes from a family or hereditary origin.
The term myopia is derived from the Greek word “myopos”, that means “squint”, an effective action to improve the clarity of what is being seen; on the other hand, if the eyelids are “squeezed”, they function as a natural diaphragm allowing an increase in the depth of field.
What does it mean to have short-sightedness? The difficulties of having myopia are especially visual: the patient complains of discomfort when watching television or in the cinema, driving, and reading road signs at night. Many students are forced to sit on front desks because they are struggling to read and copy from the blackboard. Many sportsmen need contact lenses for a safer practice of various activities. In order to see sharply at a distance, one must use a specific correction. When looking at something up close, if the degree of the defect is not particularly high, one can see with precision and perform any activity even without the use of glasses.
How do we optically compensate for myopia? Myopia is compensated through the use of spherical lenses with negative power, that are according to a proportional approach to the extent of the problem: the higher the defect and the higher the degree of correction (the value expressed in diopters). The characteristic effect of the negative lenses allows to move the light rays from the front plane, bringing them to focus on the retina; in this way, distant objects are seen clearly, but also perceived as being smaller than actual, because of the typical shrinking effect produced by the negative power of the lens.
Are there solutions in addition to glasses and contact lenses? In addition to glasses or contact lenses, you can rely on refractive surgery and the system of Phakic lenses. During the ophthalmic examination it is possible to determine if the patient is a suitable candidate for a particular type of intervention. A thorough examination of the refraction is necessary.
How is myopia assessed? With cycloplegia, we can measure the refraction and thus the extent of the defect to be corrected. The patient is administered a few drops on the eye to paralyze the natural accommodation of the crystalline lens and to dilate the pupil. Corneal topography allows for the analysis of the shape and regularity of the cornea: the projection of the center of a series of concentric light rings on the surface of the cornea is analyzed by the computer.
The main interventions for correcting myopia. Myopia can be corrected with:
Implantable Contact Lens (ICL) To Correct Myopia
How To Have Better Vision With Phakic Intraocular Lenses
Advanced research provides us with Phakic Lenses that allow you to have a sharp, clear vision. For years, the only way to permanently correct nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism was to have surgery with laser. Now thanks to the new Phakic Lenses, a better result can be obtained with a simple procedure that gives “high-definition” vision to patients. There is a fundamental difference between visual acuity and quality of vision. Many refractive surgical procedures such as LASIK are able to offer an improvement in visual acuity, but the quality of how you see may differ, as well as much, depending on the procedure used.
There are lenses that provide vision correction that goes beyond LASIK and allow the patient to see more clearly, with a greater depth and breadth of visual field. These particular intraocular lenses are called Visian and are produced in the US by STAAR.
Chosen by the US Army for their reliability and performance, they are particularly suitable lenses for those with modern lifestyles and are active and those who wish to recover the highest level of visual quality.
