Astigmatism Correction

by (Anonymous)

Q: I had no trouble with my original eyeglass prescription prior to my recent eye exam at a different optometrist office.

The new prescription has an astigmatism correction in the one eye.

My old prescription: R sphere -0.50 cylindral DS, L -0.50 cylindrical DS
New prescription: R sphere -0.25 cylinder -0.50 axis 148, L sphere -0.59 cylindrical DS

I am having a hard time with my new lenses as I did not have trouble with my prior prescription and now everything seems to have a "glowing" quality.

Does astigmatism develop with age?


A: First I must tell you that normally the astigmatism do not develop with age. Usually, if you don’t have it, will develop only in special cases, and if you have it, will be there all the time.

There are some factors as eye trauma, a pterygion, or eye surgery that can contribute to development of astigmatism. If you had none from above, is more likely that you already had this eye condition before, but it was not corrected.

This is normal if it’s a small astigmatism, under 1.00 diopter, and you see perfect without correction. Usually, the small type is not corrected unless you have poor vision.

If it does not bother you is best to be left out from your prescription (the cylinder and axis part), because with the correction, you will see the same, but you will be dizzy and see this glowing thing you mentioned. But if including astigmatism to the prescription is improving your vision and does not make you dizzy, you should keep this prescription.

In your case…

You said that the cylinder is -0.50 diopters. This means that you had this small cylinder before, but your first optometrist choose not to correct this, maybe because you had a good vision without it, only with the spherical part.

This is small, so if your vision was better before, without the cylinder part then I suggest you to return to the previous glasses without the cylinder. Your vision will be the same, but without the glowing part.


Hope this helps,
Arpi

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