Derived from the Greek word “Presbys” meaning elder and the Latin word “opia” meaning eye, Presbyopia is the disease of “old eyes”. Normally diagnosed in elder people, as the name explicitly suggests, this condition refers to a progressive lack of focus in both near and long distance vision. Its exact causes have still not been clearly determined, but researches generally agree it is an aging specific phenomenon where the muscles around the eye lens slowly lose their elasticity and leading to a “blurry” vision at all times.

Patients diagnosed with this condition will normally have difficulties seeing objects clearly when alternating their sight on various distance ranges. Some may find reading materials will become blurry as they are closer to the eye and hence they will tend to hold newspapers, books or any reading material further away from the eye in an attempt to clearly see the print. On a comical note because of this unconscious attempt of always trying to hold reading materials further away , presbyopia patients are also known on a social level to have “short arms” – referring to them needing a longer distance to hold reading materials then their arms’ length.

Presbypia is normally corrected through bifocal glasses or bifocal contact lenses but recently the hopes of developing a safe type of laser eye surgery procedure known as Presbyopia Lasik, allow for a potential instant surgical cure for this common visual impairment.

The numbers of presbyopia patients have been increasing rapidly and according to various researchers it is expected that by the year 2020 2.3 billion will have been diagnosed with this condition. If you tend to read a magazine or newspaper by holding it a little further away from your eyes, and you happen to be between the ages of 45 and 50 years old, you should definitely consider having an eye examination to preemptively assess whether you will be one of those future 2.3 billion “elder eye” patients.