Before the creation of bifocal lenses, people who have presbyopia had very few options. It is well-known that presbyopia requires patients to get vision correction at both distant and close ranges. Bifocals were available only in eyeglass lenses in those days. Those so called bifocal eyeglasses could offer both distance and close vision correction but they were much less advanced. Bifocal eyeglasses had thick lenses with a visible line down the middle. It was obvious that this design of bifocal lenses was far from attractive. Moreover, people wearing those bifocal eyeglass lenses would even suffer from giddy feeling while climbing up or down stairs.

The invention of bifocal contact lenses profoundly changed this scenario that presbyopic patients have another advantageous choice nowadays. Bifocal contact lenses available on the market come in more options than traditional bifocal eyeglasses. They can provide absolutely the same function as bifocal eyeglasses. People in their 40s bothered by focus difficulty can now choose bifocal contact lenses for more natural appearance. In fact, bifocal contact lenses have different designs.

The most common design is concentric lenses which have distance vision correction in the center and provide close vision surrounding it. In opposite, Asferic design lenses have the near correction at the center and distance correction around it. Another design is translating lenses, which have the distant correction located above the near correction center.

Bifocal contact lenses are also available in mono vision type. In this case, a lens does not offer both close and distance vision correction. Mono vision offers nearness correction in one eye and distance correction in the other. In most cases, the dominant eye should be given distance vision correction.

Another design is simultaneous vision lenses which enable presbyopic patients to focus on both near and far objects at the same time. These two kinds of vision correction lie in concentric circles unlike concentric design. With this design, the eyes can receive light from both near and far objects simultaneously.

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It is common for people who are over 40 years old to get eye problems. And presbyopia is one of the most frequently happened eye problems, in which people have difficulties in reading characters or letters on the nearby newspapers, but they can see the distant objects clearly. They need to hold newspapers at a distance so that they can read the letters on them before their eye problem is corrected. And in this situation, they will find the print in the newspaper really small.

This eye problem is caused, just like the other components of our body, mainly due to natural aging of the lenses of our eyes which is the element for focusing images of the outside world onto the eyes. It is an irreversible change which can happens to everybody as time goes by.

For these patients who have presbyopia, they need visual corrections for see nearby objects and meanwhile do not need correction when look at distant object. So you need to wear traditional glasses when reading, and take off them after that.

There are other choices. Bifocal lens is an excellent one. With this type of glasses, you can see both near and distance object clearly. So it has been more and more popular amongst people who get presbyopia.

There are also bifocal contact lenses which are specially designed for those people who have more than one visual defect. Besides, many manufacturers also provide simultaneous vision lenses which allow you to see distance and nearby objects at the same time. Multifocal contact lenses are the most advanced one which help you see things at all distances clearly. With these lenses, your eye problems can be solved perfectly.

For all of these contact lenses, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly disposable types are available for you to choose from. You can even choose colored and tinted bifocal contact lenses if you want to have an amazing appearance like young people.
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Common questions of bifocal contact lenses

If you need to read menu, newspapers from a further distance, you have probably developed presbyopia. Bifocal contact lenses are the solution to this vision problem. Bifocal contact lenses are available in soft and RGPs types, disposable type as well as silicone hydrogel extended type up to 30 days.

Multifocal contacts refer to lenses with more than one focal point or power. In this consideration, bifocal contacts are a sub-set of multifocal contacts. Lens design groups multifocal contacts into two categories: alternating vision lenses and simultaneous vision lenses. The latter one still has two types: concentric ring designs and aspheric designs.

With alternating bifocals or translating bifocals, your pupil looks through either the top section or the bottom section of the lenses for different powers in order to get respectively distance vision or close vision. The switching process requires the movement of your eyes, rather than the automatic adjustment of the lenses. Most alternating bifocals are RGPs, and their smaller size performs well during these shifts.

Concentric ring bifocals have a prescription in the center and one or more power rings around. These multiple rings alternate automatically for distance or close vision. The ring number is decided by your pupil size and light condition, while two rings are the most common. Different materials of bifocals bring different rings structures. GP bifocals always feature center-distance while soft bifocals feature center-near. Exceptions of soft bifocals include designs that are center-near on dominant eye but center-distance no non-dominant eye.

Aspheric multifocal contacts function similarly with progressive lenses which have multiple powers. They are the most popular multifocal contacts since they are also concentric and can simultaneously adjust to your vision needs at every moment.

Thanks to technological advancements in bifocals such as monovision and modified monovision, a large number of bifocal contacts are available for your selection. These technologies have helped bifocal contacts gain popularity. In detail, monovision allows your eyes to take a near prescription and distance prescription respectively, both using single lenses. Modified monovision combines single lenses and multifocal lenses on one person.

During bifocal contacts trials from your ECP, two elements are decisive: pupil size and near prescription. Bifocal contacts’ fitting is more complex and time-consuming, so you may be charged for the process. Some codes may be obeyed in choosing proper types of multifocal contacts: aspheric contacts fit low near prescription but reject large pupils, and alternating contacts suit high near prescription.