Glasses Can Be Essential For Misaligned Eyes

Despite advancements in refractive surgery, sometimes glasses are still required. Some people in life develop a misalignment of their eyes. This can persist since childhood, also known as strabismus or a “lazy eye”, or this misalignment can appear for a few various reasons in adulthood. Surgery frequently can be used to correct misalignment, but surgery isn’t an option for everyone. The other way to correct it is glasses!

There exists a special type of a lens called a prism. Prisms take light and bend it into a different direction. Similar to how a mirror reflects light towards you from a different direction, prisms do the same thing but instead of bouncing the light towards you, the light is allowed to pass through the lens. Putting a prism up to your eye will suddenly shift your vision from looking straight ahead to looking off to the side.

When you have misaligned eyes, one eye looks straight, while the other eye looks off to the side (or up/down or a combination). Placing a prism in front of that eye can cause the vision to shift back straight again. Not only does this allow that eye to see vision straight ahead, but it also gives the appearance that the eyes are completely aligned!

Prisms only work with glasses. Light has to be bent before it actually reaches the eye. With contact lenses or refractive surgery, the correction is placed on the eye and bending the light ahead of time isn’t possible. Thus, to correct misaligned eyes, glasses may be essential!

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