Medical Conditions

This lens is inside the eye just behind the pupil and has the ability to focus on objects both far and near while you are young enough. Typically at around age 42-45 years the lens becomes dysfunctional and cannot focus as well any more. This is when people typically get reading glasses, bifocals or varifocal glasses. If the lens starts becoming cloudy, the vision starts blurring and now you have a cataract. The best analogy is thinking of an egg about to be fried in a frying pan. You can see the yellow yolk surrounded by clear material through which you can clearly see the bottom of the pan. This clear material is the closest thing in nature to the natural lens. Once the egg starts frying the clear material becomes white, then yellow and eventually brown / black as the egg cooks. This is exactly the same process occurring in the lens as the cataract becomes less clear and more cloudy. The only treatment currently available for cataracts that are impacting vision is that of cataract surgery and intra-ocular lens (IOL) implantation.

Keratoconus is a condition affecting about 1 in 2000 people where the collagen fibres in the cornea are relatively loosely arranged and not tightly bound to one another as it would be in a healthy cornea. The result is that the fibres can slip over one another and cause a steepening (cone) of the lower half of the cornea. This leads to a reduction in vision, an increase in astigmatism and the introduction of aberrations that reduce the quality of vision. It typically starts in the late teens and early 20’s

Dry eyes impact your vision very significantly as the light rays entering the eye actually bend on the surface of the tear layer and not the cornea as one might imagine. If the tears are unstable, then the vision is less crisp.

FOR A WELLINGTON EYE CLINIC INFORMATION SHEET SUMMARIZING THE CONDITION AND THE TREATMENTS AVAILABLE PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK TOWARDS THE END OF THIS PAGE.