LASIK Alternatives Salt Lake City - Dr. Phil Hoopes, Jr.

If you're not a LASIK candidate, you may qualify for one of the LASIK alternatives offered at our Salt Lake City office.

DR. PHIL HOOPES, JR.: In your mid-40s to early-50s, everybody undergoes difficulty focusing up close. We call it the near-blur syndrome. LASIK surgery offers the ability to try to improve your up-close vision. For people who wear prescription for distance, we are able to fix your dominant eye for distance, and we leave the non-dominant eye a little near-sighted on purpose. This is called mono-vision, where we split the two eyes up into their different roles. What the brain will see, when both eyes are open, is one eye providing distance vision, and one eye providing near vision. And the blend of that vision allows people to get through much of their daytime, without having to turn to reading glasses. For people who are not candidates for LASIK surgery, there are now intraocular lenses that have been FDA approved, to improve near vision. Several companies, such as Crystalens, ReStor, and ReZoom, received FDA approval for lenses that have both distance and near capabilities. And this is different than monovision because each eye, alone, can see distance and near. In fact, nearly 90 percent of people with these lenses feel that they see well enough not to put on glasses all day long.