Astigmatism: Symptoms, causes, types & treatment!

Astigmatism is a refractive error, much like near and farsightedness. It neither a disease nor a particular eye health anomaly and rather a problem concerned with how eye focuses the light. When light fails coming to single focus on the retina and hampers producing clear vision, it refers to astigmatism. Multiple focus points occur in front, at the rear or both sides of the retina.

Symptoms
  • Distorted and blurred vision at all distances is a common symptom
  • Uncorrected astigmatism may give an individual strain in the eye and headache especially after reading or any task that requires excess visual focus
  • Frequent squinting
Causes

Irregular corneal shape is the primary cause of astigmatism. Rather than the symmetrical round shape cornea, it’s curved significantly from one end as compared to being perpendicular thereby leading to vision distortion and uneven light focus. Principal meridians are the steepest and flattest in the eye suffering with astigmatism. Other causes are irregular and difference in shape of eye lenses which often refers to as lenticular astigmatism.

Types

There’re three basic types of astigmatism namely;

1. Myopic – Either one or both principal meridians of the eye are near-sighted. Note that if both the meridians are near-sighted, the degree of myopia would be different.

2. Hyperopic – Both or perhaps single meridian is farsighted whereby there’s a difference in degree of hyperopic.

3. Mixed – Both meridians are different in a way that one is near-sighted and the other is farsighted.

Astigmatism can be further classified into regular and irregular. The case in which principal meridians are at a distance of 90-degree (perpendicular to each other) is termed as regular astigmatism.

With typical or regular astigmatism, principal meridians aren’t perpendicular that results in an oval-shaped eye front. This may be a result of an eye injury which might’ve caused scarring on the cornea or from keratoconus; a disease that gradually thins the cornea.

Probability of occurrence

Astigmatism usually occurs during early stages of life which is why scheduling an eye examination of the child with an expert doctor to avoid vision related problems, resulting from uncorrected astigmatism. Only the doctor would recommend if someone’s in need of Lasik in Abu Dhabi which is the best and accepted treatment for astigmatism and reshaping the cornea in a proper way.

A survey performed on approximately 2,500 American children ranging between the age of 5 and 17 years revealed that above 28-percent had astigmatism; either of 1.0 dioptre (D) or greater! Occurrence of astigmatism varied significantly based on ethnicity such that highest prevalence of the problem were among the Asian and Hispanic children to nearly 37-percent followed by 24-percent in the white and 20-percent among the African-Americans.

Treatment & corrective options

After detection of astigmatism following eye evaluations and frequent monitoring, treatment roadmap is suggested by the doctor based on severity. Common and known options are wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses, refractive surgery such as LASIK in Abu Dhabi is also recommended bearing highly successful outcome.

Conclusion

Even the slightest change in vision requires immediate check-up with the eye doctor so as to undergo timely treatment.
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