What is Presbyopia?
Developing as age increases, presbyopia is a condition that has similar effects to myopia – inability to focus on near objects – but has a different cause.
Where in myopia, the eyeball is too short or the cornea is misshapen; in presbyopia, ageing has caused the lens to:
- become stiff
- change shape
- change size.
Either alone or in combination, these changes mean the lens can no longer give the focus required for near vision. Presbyopia also commonly occurs at the same time as other vision problems.
As part of normal ageing, presbyopia is the condition most off-the-shelf reading glasses are intended to counteract.
It’s one of the first recorded eye conditions. Some of the oldest surviving writings in history mention a condition that is identifiable as presbyopia.