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Why Your Reading Vision Is Getting Blurry

LASIK is a life-changing option for vision correction, offering a quick, painless procedure with lasting results. By reshaping the cornea, LASIK can dramatically improve eyesight, reducing or even eliminating the need for glasses or contact lenses. While LASIK permanently reshapes the cornea to correct refractive errors like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, the eye can still undergo changes over time, particularly as part of the natural aging process. Let’s explore reasons why your reading vision is getting blurry after LASIK. 

As you age, the lens inside your eye loses flexibility, making it harder to focus on close objects like reading material. This condition, which typically begins around age 40-45, is known as presbyopia. This condition differs from refractive errors because it isn’t caused by the shape of the cornea. The lens of the eye is responsible for changing shape to focus on objects at different distances, a process called accommodation. As a person ages, the muscles that control the lens of the eye weaken, making it harder to adjust focus. Symptoms include difficulty reading small print or text close to the eyes, the need to hold reading materials further away to see them clearly, eye strain or headaches and blurred vision when performing close-up tasks. Reading glasses, bifocals or progressive lenses generally resolve this issue. More advanced treatment options include surgery such as conductive keratoplasty or presbyopia-correcting intraocular lens implants or laser treatments. 

Blurry reading vision after LASIK isn’t always due to presbyopia. Other potential reasons why your reading vision is getting blurry may include dry eye syndrome (common a few months post-surgery), overcorrection or under correction from the LASIK procedure, regression (in rare circumstances, the cornea returns toward its original shape), irregular astigmatism, posterior vitreous detachment (separation of the vitreous gel from the retina usually due to aging), unmasked hyperopia, corneal haze or scarring (healing complications), flap-related issues, neurological or systemic conditions (such as multiple sclerosis or diabetes) or simply poor lighting and eye fatigue. 

If your reading vision remains blurry after LASIK, a consultation with an ophthalmologist or follow up with your LASIK surgeon is important to identify the cause and determine the course of treatment. If you have a LASIK procedure scheduled, it is crucial to understand that following post-surgery protocol not only maximizes best vision correction results but minimizes complications. Taking LASIK recovery seriously helps safeguard both your eye health and the procedure’s effectiveness, ensuring clear, long-lasting vision. 
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