Astigmatism

Astigmatism refers to an imperfection in the curve of your eyes that causes blurry distance and up close vision. Astigmatism happens when the front of your eye or lens has misaligned curves.

Generally speaking, the curves in your eyes form a round ball. With astigmatism, these curves turn into an egg-shape. There are three main types of astigmatism:

• Myopic astigmatism, when light rays focus in the front of the retina
• Hyperopic astigmatism, when light rays focus in the back of the retina
• Mixed astigmatism, when your vision oscillates between farsighted and nearsighted

The team at Fabulous Optical can help you or your child determine which type of astigmatism is affecting you.

Astigmatism can exhibit any of the following symptoms:

• Discomfort related to eye strain
• Headaches
• Problems sleeping
• Frequent squinting
• Blurred vision
• Distorted vision

Astigmatism might be the reason why some of these symptoms sound familiar.

The most common cause of astigmatism is a refractive error in the eye that affects your cornea and the lens. If you have 20/20 vision, then both of these sections of your eye have a round shape. With astigmatism, your cornea and your lens are shaped like an egg, which causes the eye to refract light rays.

A team member can tell you if your child has astigmatism early on in their life as a result of a congenital cause. You can also develop astigmatism because of an eye injury, surgery, or disease.

Up until recently, eyeglasses were the only real treatment for astigmatism. However, in recent years, Fabulous Optical has been happy to offer patients toric lenses to correct astigmatism. Toric lenses are soft and weighted, effectively repairing the refracting error in your eye.

The team might also consider LASIK surgery to eliminate the correction permanently. During this procedure, your doctor creates a thin flap over your cornea to expose its tissue. From there, they use a state-of-the-art computerized tracking device to reshape the eye tissue.