"Pre-assembled" eyewear, the do-it-yourself optical device chosen by 5 million Italians every year, represents for many an easy solution to buy, but does not guarantee the well-being of the eyes and the body in general. While for presbyopia, or that natural process that appears after the age of 40 and which prevents you from focusing, for example, when reading the newspaper without special glasses, and which it concerns 28 million Italians, new technologies allow different innovative solutions. It was discussed in Milan at the conference “Presbyopia, easy to make mistakes: the new frontiers of technology”, in the presence of specialist ophthalmologists and representatives of opticians and manufacturing companies (Anfao), as part of the "2019 year of presbyopia and progressive lenses" project, the initiative to raise awareness on the correct management of the visual defect organized by B2Eyes- Fabiano Group Editore (FGE) with the scientific collaboration of SOI, the Italian Ophthalmological Society.
Presbyopia is a normal aging process of our eyes, which causes difficulties in seeing objects up close, generally from a distance between 25 and 40 centimetres. In recent years, the often unbridled use of luminous electronic devices has introduced new visual requirements in daily practice: the need to focus on screens at close range such as those of PCs, tablets and smartphones, subject the eye to a significant accommodative and convergence commitment of variable entity depending on the working distance and the assumed posture. Quickly moving your eyes from the keyboard to the screen, from the worksheet to the calculator on the desk and then to the surrounding environment forces the eye to a constant and continuous effort to focus: never as in these cases, the "pre-assembled" eyewear it is inadequate and progressive lenses are not an option but a necessity, according to doctors and manufacturers.
“Unfortunately there are no ways to delay the onset of presbyopia, but today it is possible to correct the defect with progressive lenses which, thanks to technological evolution, have reached a level of customization such as to eliminate most of the difficulties of adaptation so penalizing in past years. It is also advisable to follow some good daily practices in the face of increasingly intense use of electronic devices,” he explained Dr. Luigi Mele, ophthalmologist surgeon at the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" of Naples SOI expert for the issue of refractive errors and presbyopia.
Today, modern optical technology provides solutions that allow clear vision from all distances. Progressive lenses take advantage of the change in curvature and allow you to see well, avoiding the use of several glasses for different types of activities such as reading, sport, driving a car, office work, etc. The simplest models of lenses for the correction of presbyopia are monofocals: suitable for fixed vision at an average reading distance of about 40 centimetres, however, they do not allow objects to be clearly seen beyond this distance. They are therefore not the ideal solution for those who work at the computer, as they do not solve the problem of focusing the keyboard, the monitor and the surrounding environment. This is why bifocal and trifocal lenses exist: these allow clear vision at multiple distances but bring with them the limit of the annoying image jump of near and intermediate vision. Limit that is exceeded with progressive lenses, thanks to which interruptions of visual continuity are cancelled. These lenses can be combined with anti-reflection, anti-scratch, anti-fog treatments, with UV protection and blue light to live with presbyopia in maximum comfort.
“Progressive lenses can be tailored to the wearer. I am not referring only to optical correction, but to a whole series of parameters measured on the wearer which include, for example, biometric data and the chosen frame", he said Paolo Pettazzoni, vice president of Anfao (National Association of Optical Manufacturers). "It is precisely this possibility of individual customization that allows minimizing any annoyances due to the laws of physics, thus allowing for comfortable viewing from any point of view". “In our country – added Marco Procacciante, CEO of Vision Group – the level of penetration, understood as the number of progressive lenses sold in relation to the total, is around 20%. France, for example, is above 40%. How to interpret this data? In Italy solutions are used that are too simple and even a little old compared to current technology. Today, with progressive lenses, we forget that we are farsighted”.
“In recent years – he said instead Matteo Piovella, president of SOI (Italian Ophthalmological Society) – we have witnessed an extraordinary evolution of all ophthalmology at a technical, technological, diagnostic and therapeutic, surgical and non-surgical level. Even the benefits obtained today from cataract surgery have multiplied by three. The intervention, developed by Charles Kelman fifty years ago in the United States, has always been based on the opportunity to replace the natural lens, the crystalline, which has now become opaque with a transparent artificial crystalline. It has only been a few years since we have managed to double the advantages of the surgery by giving patients the possibility of inserting high-tech artificial lenses, which allow them to see from a distance and to drive a car without depending on glasses, even for people who have always they were affected by important visual defects. What's more, the benefit has tripled since, after surgery, it's possible to read the newspaper without depending on close-up glasses. A real revolution that allows today to eliminate the penalties of presbyopia for those who undergo cataract surgery that takes advantage of the latest incredible improvements. Today crystalline lenses can correct presbyopia, therefore anyone who has to undergo cataract surgery must carefully evaluate this possibility of a lens that also corrects presbyopia".
