What are the symptoms of presbyopia? Are they easy to identify?

Presbyopia is a common eye disease in life, mostly occurring in middle-aged and elderly people. In fact, many friends still don’t understand the symptoms of presbyopia. The most obvious symptom of presbyopia is the inability to see small print at close range.

Typical symptoms of presbyopia: Difficulty seeing near

In contrast to myopic patients, presbyopic patients will gradually find that they cannot see small fonts clearly when reading at close range, so they unconsciously tilt their heads back or hold books and newspapers farther away to see the words clearly. Moreover, the required reading distance gradually increases with age.

Typical symptom of presbyopia 2: Cannot see near for a long time

Due to insufficient lens accommodation, the near point gradually becomes farther away, and patients usually need to make an effort to see nearby objects clearly. If this effort exceeds the limit and causes tension in the ciliary body, when looking at distant objects again, the tension in the ciliary body cannot relax immediately, thus forming temporary myopia. When looking at nearby objects again, there is a short period of blurriness, which is a manifestation of slow accommodation response. Fatigue occurs when the ciliary muscle reaches the limit of its function and cannot keep working.

Because of the reduced ability to accommodate, patients have to work at close range close to the limit of binocular accommodation, so they cannot last long. At the same time, due to the linkage effect of adjusting the collection, excessive adjustment will cause excessive collection, which is also a factor causing discomfort. Therefore, it is easy to read the newspaper serially, the words will appear in pairs, and finally it will be impossible to read. Some patients may even experience symptoms of visual fatigue such as eye swelling, tearing, headache, and itchy eyes.

Typical symptom of presbyopia 3: Reading requires stronger illumination

Insufficient lighting not only increases the visual resolution threshold, but also causes the pupil to dilate. The dilated pupil forms a larger diffusion circle on the retina, making the symptoms of presbyopia more obvious. As people age, they become more prone to fatigue even when doing close work during the day, so people with presbyopia prefer to use brighter lights when reading at night. Sometimes placing the light between the book and the eyes can not only increase the contrast between the book and the text, but also shrink the pupils. However, placing lights in front of the eyes will inevitably cause glare interference. The closer the interfering light source is to the visual axis, the greater the impact on vision.