Peace signs, sit-ins, rock and roll, war protest, civil rights; these are things that the word baby-boomer brings to mind. And now add reading glasses. With the youngest members of this generation approaching fifty, and the need for vision correction inevitable, boomers in "granny glasses" will soon be the norm.

Presbyopia, the type of farsightedness that occurs during middle age, begins to take effect on people in their early forties and affects everyone by the age of fifty. Gradually newsprint becomes more difficult to read at close distances, as the words appear smaller. As humor columnist Dave Barry puts it in his book about turning fifty, "pretty soon I started noticing that everything I tried to read--newspapers, books, nasal-spray instructions, the United States Constitution--had been changed to the bacteria-letter format."

Like Barry, many people take this sign of aging in stride, making quips about needing arm extensions to be able to read what comes on the chicken sandwich from the restaurant menu. For people like this, major surgery with the possibility of complications and side effects would not be an option. This is why advancements in refractive surgery have opened the door of permanent vision correction for so many.

Types Of Treatments

Because presbyopic patients may have a number of different eye problems, vision correction procedures vary for each patient. Dr. Daniel Durrie, director of refractive surgery at Durrie Vision in Overland Park, KS and an associate clinical professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center, says that the general agreement amongst ophthalmologists in the marketplace is that candidates for surgery come in three basic groups: patients with medical eye problems including cataracts, patients with nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, and patients who suffer only from presbyopia.  Patients with cataracts require surgery to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a new clear intraocular lens implant that corrects the vision.

 For patients with farsightedness, nearsightedness, and/or mild astigmatisms in addition to presbyopia, surface procedures such as LASEK and PRK can be used to correct vision. These types of procedures, all of which have received FDA approvals, carry with them minimal, temporary side effects such as halos at night or dry eyes, which usually disappear in a few months time. There is a 2-5% chance of needing an additional procedure, called an enhancement, to refine the visual outcome.

CK Procedure For Presbyopes With Healthy Eye History

The newest member of surgical options is CK (conductive keratoplasty), which received its FDA approval for treatment of presbyopic patients on March 22, 2004. This procedure is for patients who only need reading glasses, have had excellent distance vision all of their lives and are pver the age of 40. This minimally invasive procedure takes about 3-5 minutes to perform, and is done in your doctor's office with the use of a local anesthetic in the form of eye drops.

Instead of lasers, CK uses a pen shaped probe whith a hair-thin tip that emits radio frequency energy (RF) into the peripheral cornea in a ring shaped pattern to gently heat and reshape the cornea. The circle of treatment spots acts like a belt, tightening the cornea in the periphery so that the central cornea steepens.  Before surgery, the doctor will determine how many rings of treatment are needed to correct the patient's vision.

According to Dr. Durrie, who worked on the research team for this procedure, patients begin to show some improvement in near vision immediately, and it continues to improve the next few days following the procedure.  Because CK has few associated risks, takes little time to perform, and requires a short recovery time, patients can often return to their ordinary daily routine in less than a weeks time.

Choosing Vision Correction

With the recent FDA approval of CK for treatment of presbyopia, Dr. Durrie said that it was a great time for presbyopia sufferers looking for vision correction through surgery. However, the general public is not aware that surgical options for treating presbyopia are available.

To those who are considering vision correction, Dr. Durrie suggests research into the procedures for your particular eye problems and consultation with a doctor who can give you proper information about the options available to you.

Choosing A Doctor

Dr. Durrie, who has been teaching refractive surgery to doctors for over twenty years, states that, as with any other surgery, there is a learning curve involved with all refractive procedures. Since some doctors may be proficient in one procedure, CK for example, but not in others, like LASEK or IOL's, you should choose a doctor based on his or her ability to perform the best procedure that meets your visual needs.

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