For those of you who are 40+ years old and are tired of wearing readers over your contact lenses, Twenty Twenty Eyecare provides numerous multi-focal contact lens designs in both soft and hard lenses. Multi-focal technology continues to improve year after year. You may have tried multi-focal contacts lenses in the past without prevail. This does not mean that a different design or fit will not work for you. Even if you have astigmatism, our doctors at Twenty Twenty Eyecare can find a multi-focal contacts lens that will suit your visual needs. Dr.’s Morgans and Bigheart will try as many designs necessary until good vision and comfort is achieved.
Bifocal and multifocal contact lenses are designed to give you good vision when you reach your 40s. Beginning at this age, you may need to hold reading material – like a menu or newspaper – farther from your eyes to see it clearly. This condition is called “presbyopia.”
Bifocal and multifocal contact lenses are available in both soft and rigid gas permeable (GP) materials.
- Simultaneous vision lenses. With these lenses, both distance and near zones of the lens are in front of your pupil at the same time. Although this might sound unworkable, after a short period of time your visual system learns to use the power you need and ignore the other lens power(s), depending on what you are looking at. Simultaneous vision lenses are the most popular type of multifocal contact lens. They are nearly always soft lenses, and are available in two designs:
- Concentric ring designs – These are bifocal lenses with either the distance or near power in the center of the lens, with alternating rings of distance and near powers surrounding it.
- Aspheric designs – These are progressive-style multifocal lenses, with many powers blended across the lens surface. Some aspheric lenses have the distance power in the center of the lens; others have the near power in the center.
- Alternating vision (or translating) lenses. These are GP multifocal lenses that are designed like bifocal eyeglass lenses. The top part of the lens has the distance power, and the bottom part of the lens contains the near power. When you look straight ahead, your eye is looking through the distance part of the lens. When you look down, your lower lid holds the lens in place while your pupil moves (translates) into the near zone of the lens for reading.