5 Eye Complications That Require More Than Prescription Lenses To Deal With

Prescription lenses in the form of glasses, contact lenses, and even sunglasses have played a huge role in providing affordable and effective management of numerous eye conditions. These lenses are undoubtedly some of the best inventions in the world of eye care. However, prescription lenses are not the only solution to eye problems out there. The most common eye conditions that demand prescription lenses include shortsightedness, farsightedness, eye-focusing problems related with age and irregular eye curvature.

Other eye complications will therefore require additional treatment if not a completely different way of dealing with them. Here are five eye complications that will require more than just wearing prescription lenses.

Night blindness (Nyctalopia)

This is a condition that is evident in patients when they are in poorly lit environments especially at night. Night blindness is usually an indication of an underlying eye disorder, and the condition will disappear as soon as the eye recovers from the disorder. The most common eye conditions whose symptoms include night blindness are glaucoma, Vitamin A deficiency, and cataracts.

• Some glaucoma medicine might cause night blindness in some people; therefore, switching the medicine will reduce the condition
• Nutritional Vitamin A supplements will effectively deal with Vitamin A deficiency. Getting this treatment early enough will save a patient from suffering permanent blindness
• Cataracts require surgery to get rid of

It is extremely important for an individual with night blindness to visit the eye specialist as soon as possible, since a patient can injure him or herself as well as other people especially at night.

Light sensitivity (Photophobia)

An individual with the above condition will experience headaches and start to strain with exposure to bright light. This condition is however not a disease of the eye, but a symptom of another disease in the eye. Usually, people with inflammation in the eyes tend to develop a lot of sensitivity to light.

• The best way to deal with light sensitivity is to find treatment for the inflammation or the underlying eye condition.
• Some medication can also be the cause of the condition, and requesting your doctor to prescribe different medication will help to improve the situation.

Visiting an eye specialist as soon as you discover that you are developing the condition will help to correct the complication faster.

Color Blindness (Color Deficiency)

As the name suggests, an individual suffering from this condition will have a hard time telling colors apart. Most patients seem to have a problem differentiating especially between green and red. The main cause of this condition is a defect in the X chromosome, and the course of treatment is therefore supposed to be along the lines of gene therapy.

The color filtering lenses available in the market are supposed to correct this condition, though many patients who use these lenses claim that they only add to the color confusion they have. The hard truth is that this condition has no cure, especially if someone is born with the condition. However, if the condition has a strong relationship with external factors, the eye professionals are able to identify the damage and possibly lead the eye back to normal.

However, there is hope in the future for the development and adoption of gene technology to aid in rectifying this condition. The treatment will demand the injection of genetic material in an individual’s eye, materials that will have the ability to repair the defective chromosomes.

Lazy eye (Amblyopia)

Lazy eye is a condition that develops early in life, and it results from an individual having one weak eye and one strong eye. Several complications including hereditary factors can lead to the development of this problem, and it is possible to correct this condition depending on the causes. If you do not correct lazy eye early enough, the nerves in the weaker eye responsible for sending messages to the brain continue to weaken and the eye might end up losing its functionality.

Wearing an eye patch is the least demanding of all corrective measures here. When you cover the stronger eye for a few hours in a day, the weaker eye will become stronger with time and the brain will start to depend on the weaker eye for visual input.

If the eye patch is proving to be problematic, a doctor can prescribe eye drops for the good eye. These drops blur vision in the good eye and help the weaker eye to develop, as is the case when wearing an eye patch.

Crossed eyes (Strabismus)

‘Crossed eyes’ is the condition where the eyes do not always move together in the same direction, resulting from problems related to the muscles responsible for eye movement. Since each eye is collecting its own information at the same time, this can be quite confusing for the brain.

If the cause for this problem is related to farsightedness in one eye, then prescription lenses are a solution. However, if the problems are because of one eye developing weakness and tending towards lazy eye, then an eye patch or eye drops are sufficient.

Surgery is another effective treatment for this condition, where the main objective here is to strengthen the weaker eye. The best time to perform this surgery is as early in life as possible, though even in adults the surgery will correct the condition.