Monovision Contact Lenses

Some lenses may not be suitable for everyone, since it takes time for our eyes to adjust and it still needs to adapt and class out the different powers. Some people will have visual needs that do not meet the current range of bifocal contact lenses. If that is the case, you can go for a contact lens fitting method called Monovision.

What is Monovision?

Monovision is the science of fitting contact lenses for people who has developed and is suffering from presbyopia. Presbyopia is an unavoidable change in vision especially for people who are in their 40 years of age, which causes a person to have difficulty to focus on small objects and reading in small prints. For most people, they are familiar with progressive contact lenses, bifocal contact lenses and reading eyeglasses. But, some are still new with the vision correction method known as "Monovision contact lenses".

How do Monovision contact lenses work?

With Monovision, you wear a contact lens on one eye to correct your distance vision and another contact lens in the other eye (non-dominant eye) to correct your near vision. Normally, the contact lens for correcting your distance vision is worn on your eye that is in control (dominant). When using Monovision contact lenses, your dominant eye that can see clearly in distances will somewhat blur up close while your non-dominant eye will slightly blur when you look at distant objects. But when worn together, the effect will be that your eyes can see perfectly and be comfortable regardless of the distance and how near or far your vision is.

Monovision contact lenses work since the brain is misled to thinking that the contact lens is actually a part of your natural eyes. Even though it can take 2 weeks or so to be able to adjust to Monovision contact lenses and it might be a strange choice for some, most patients easily adapt to it and they won't even notice which eye is the "distance eye and the near eye".

Different Types of Monovision Contact Lenses

Considering our visual demands and how one reacts with monovision contact lenses, variations may be suggested by your eye doctor to best suit your requests:

Mini-monovision

• A less than typical amplifying power is added to the near vision lens.
• Great resolution for people who doesn't find the standard monovision contact lenses suitable in providing them sharp distance vision they want and they do not need any close-up work (people who won't mind wearing eyeglasses occasionally).
• Although this type of contact lens wearers may still need reading glasses as compared to a person who is wearing standard monovision contact lenses, they are less dependent than a person who is wearing both contact lens.

Modified monovision

• In this category, a single contact lens is still worn in the dominant (distance vision eye) and a bifocal contact lens is worn on the non-dominant eye.
• Like mini-monovision, modified monovision contact lenses provides sharper distance vision unlike the standard monovision contact lenses and still giving satisfactory near vision without the aid of eyeglasses for reading up-close.

Who are good candidates?

Monovision contact lenses are suitable for people who have presbyopia. Helping you attain functional, good vision whether it be near or from a far distance.

Limitations of Monovision contact lenses

There is a compromise between the patients fully adapting to clarity of vision at a near and far distance and at the same time giving adequate corrected vision resulting to a slight blurring of far-away objects. Even though the 2 eyes still work mutually as a team, our binocular vision is somewhat compromised which may lead to a decrease in our perception of depth.

Cost of Monovision contact lenses

Monovision contact lenses are less expensive than multifocal contact lenses, as well as replacing them will cost cheaper. However, fitting for these lenses cost more than standard contact lenses since some eye doctor's charges fees double the amount of a standard contact lens fitting.

Surgical Monovision

Monovision can also be used for the surgery of presbyopia. This can be achieved through Lasik surgery as well as Conductive Keratoplasty (CK) surgery. Before any surgical monovision correction procedures, it is advisable to "test-drive" the idea of monovision contact lenses.

Back to Home Colored Contact Lenses