Generally, vision begins to weaken after a person reaches the age of forty, even if it was perfect before that. So what should be done? Eye doctors clarify the seriousness of vision impairment and how it can be addressed.
1. **Presbyopia**: The lens of the eye gradually expands with aging and loses its flexibility, although the mechanisms that cause changes in its curvature and the associated muscles operate normally. However, the lens itself becomes too dense for the person to see nearby objects. Doctors recommend wearing glasses to correct age-related farsightedness. A surgical procedure can also replace the lens with an artificial one, with multifocal lenses providing natural vision at any distance.
2. **Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD)**: This common disease is associated with changes in the central area of the retina (the macula), which contains many photoreceptors. In macular degeneration, the blood supply weakens, causing the photoreceptors to suffer. As a result, a black spot appears in the center of the visual field. The first symptoms of this disease are distortions in the appearance of objects.
3. **Cataracts**: Cataracts are an inevitable condition of lens aging. The size of the lens continuously increases, and by age forty, it loses its flexibility; by age sixty, it begins to lose transparency. A person in the early stages of cataracts feels as if there's a veil in front of their eyes and may see “floaters.” This issue can be resolved by undergoing surgery to replace the natural lens with a transparent artificial one.
4. **Glaucoma**: This is a neurological condition that can lead to complete blindness. The disease occurs due to the failure of the image to pass through the fibers of the optic nerve, leading to a narrowing of the visual field. Elevated intraocular pressure is a symptom of glaucoma. Regular consultations with an eye doctor and monitoring the eye pressure level can lead to early diagnosis and treatment with medications, special drops, and laser procedures; in critical cases, surgery may be required to slow disease progression and preserve vision for many years.
