Hyperopia: Long-sightedness

Long-sightedness can be treated with laser eye surgery

Hyperopia occurs when your eyeball is slightly shorter, or your cornea is flatter than required for clear vision.

In contrast to myopia, this means that light focuses behind the retina, and close vision can appear blurry.

Many hyperopic eyes can self-focus in younger people by utilising the zoom intended for reading to compensate for the blurring.

However, this ‘zoom’ gets weaker as the eye ages, so near vision becomes blurred. Later, distance vision becomes blurred as well. This means that people with hyperopia often require reading glasses before their 40s and then require both reading and distance glasses (or bifocals) from their 40s or 50s and onwards.

As with myopia, laser eye surgery can correct hyperopia by changing the shape of the cornea so that its focusing power matches the length of the eye.

Laser eye surgery can also correct ageing eyes (presbyopia).