A cure for presbyopia

A cure for presbyopia is one of ophthalmology’s holy grails, but until the cure arrives, helping patients manage it is the name of the game. Here, two new ways to help patients deal with presbyopia are profiled by individuals working with them.

Simulating Visual Options

One of the challenges when attempting to help a patient with presbyopia is allowing the patient to experience some of the treatment options open to him (such as multifocality) before enacting them, to increase the likelihood that the choice the patient makes won’t leave him unhappy. As any clinician knows, explaining something like multifocal vision in words to a cataract patient is a poor substitute for the actual experience.

Now, a company spun off from the Visual Optics and Biophotonics Lab at the Institute of Optics in Madrid, Spain, has created a wearable device that allows patients to experience different types of correction in real-life situations, including the improved near vision and reduction in distance visual quality associated with multifocal lenses. Because the device can simulate simultaneous vision, it’s called SimVis.
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