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Myopia on the rise
86 per cent of the population between the ages of 35 and 74 are ill-beheld - one-third of them short-sighted, far-sighted and one-sided. The latter form is also called astigmatism and usually occurs in conjunction with one of the other two refractive errors. Last year, a study showed that, in particular, there is a connection between high school and / or vocational and short-sightedness: the higher this is, the more likely it is to become curious. Experts like Dr. Kaweh Schayan-Araghi, Board Member of the Professional Association of Ophthalmologists and Medical Director of the Artemis Eye Clinic in Frankfurt, see a trend towards curiosity, as it can also be amplified by frequent PC and smartphone use.
Those who suffer from shortsightedness, see their surroundings without visual aids sharp only nearby. The cause is a deformation of the eyeball. This is too long compared to the refractive power of the cornea and lens. Distant objects are displayed in front of the retina and thus only blurred. "The eyeball grows into adulthood," explains Dr. Schayan-Araghi. "Both genetic predisposition and environmental stimuli such as artificial room lighting instead of sunlight and frequent close work stimulate the eyeball to growth." So who spends a little outdoors and instead reads a lot or continuously on screens of computers and smartphones, favors shortsightedness. As the useful life of smartphones and tablet PCs has increased steadily in recent years, ophthalmologists also expect an increase in ametropia.
In order to treat nearsightedness, visual aids must ensure that light rays are lengthened, so to speak, so that they can be focused on the retina at the point of the sharpest vision despite a longer eyeball. Normal glasses are often sufficient with so-called minus glasses. If you are bothered by the glasses or you just do not get used to them, contact lenses offer an alternative. Anyone who wants to completely renounce such vision aids, can have his defective vision corrected surgically by a LASIK surgery.
In LASIK, the inner surface of the cornea is treated by means of a cold-light laser in such a way that light rays - as if wearing a visual aid - are prolonged on the retina. LASIK is considered a very safe method to correct myopia to minus eight diopters. "For an eye laser correction to come into question, the patient's cornea must not be too thin. For adolescents under the age of 18, laser treatment is generally unsuitable because their eyes may still be changing, "explains Drs. Schayan-Araghi. New developments such as femto-LASIK have also made the procedure safer in recent years. This also allows corrections for thin cornea. After surgery, patients no longer need visual aids. Stronger shortsightedness down to minus 20 dioptres can also be repaired surgically. For this, physicians rely on artificial lenses, which they implant in addition to their own lens in the eye, back. Which method is best suited in the individual case and which advantages and disadvantages there are, the patient and doctor must clarify in a detailed conversation with comprehensive preliminary investigations.