By Have you ever heard about “astigmatism”? Astigmatism is a situation where someone’s eyesight becomes blurry, due to a refraction error. It may occur, when the surface of eye, or cornea, is not curved in a normal way. So, as the eye catches the light, the eye doesn’t focus the light evenly onto the retina, which result a blurry vision. Nevertheless, you don’t need to be worry, because it can be treated with eyeglasses or contact lenses.
The types of astigmatism are divided into three, myopic astigmatism (nearsightedness), hyperopic astigmatism (farsightedness), and mixed astigmatism (one is nearsighted, the other is farsighted). Someone who is indicated with astigmatism may encounter some basic symptoms, such as; having blurred eyesight (nearsightedness or farsightedness, or the combination of both), squinting, getting a headache, feeling eye strain, and having poor vision at night, which is dangerous for driving.
Additionally, if you notice any of the symptoms above, we recommend you to call for a sight test with an optician. After your eyes are examined, the optician will give you your eye prescription, which contains a lot of information regarding your eye condition.
After you received the prescription, you can start purchasing contact lenses online. There are 3 aspects that you need to comprehend while purchasing your lenses for short and long-sightedness:
- Power: this is what you need to ensure that you have focus eyesight to see things precisely.
- Base curve: this is the measurement that is made base on your eye’s natural curvature, in order to place the lenses perfectly secured on your eyes. Basically the lenses company has arranged the measurement, but they may provide multiple choices of lenses.
- Diameter: this is your contact lenses width.
However, if the eye examination result stated that your vision is affected by astigmatism; normal lenses won’t be able to support your vision, if you wear them. Therefore you are required to buy specific lenses called toric lenses, which are designed specifically to be suitable for an eye with astigmatism, so you can place it easily and firmly. A toric lens will include two additional measurements, such as:
- Cylinder: A measurement number of 0.25, the additional amount of eyesight correction required to treat astigmatism.
- Axis: A number between 0 and 180, which indicates the required angle of your correction.
Similar with common lenses, it is possible for you to have a particular prescription for each eye. It is also possible to have only one eye which is affected by astigmatism, while the other one is normal. In this case, you need to pay attention to the written sign for the toric lenses, before you place it on your eye. It is usually written “for astigmatism” or “toric”. Meanwhile, you can wear the normal lens for the other one, which is not affected by astigmatism. It might be confusing at the beginning to maintain the use of contact lenses, but eventually you will feel comfortable wearing them on a daily basis.
