When you hear about Toric Lenses, it may be referring to either a Toric contact lens or a Toric Intraocular Lens (IOL). Toric contact lenses are used by people with astigmatism who desire to continue wearing contact lenses. Toric IOL’s are a treatment option for patients who need cataract surgery and desire to correct both their distance vision and astigmatism with one procedure.
One of the reasons people were unable to wear soft contact lenses in the past is because they had astigmatism. Astigmatism is caused by the irregular shape of your cornea or your lens. However, this has changed with the introduction of Toric contact lenses. Not only are they able to correct your distance vision, they are also able to lessen your astigmatism.
Toric intraocular lenses can be used as part of cataract surgery. Past cataract surgical patients may have still had blurred vision due to astigmatism even though their cataract was removed and a traditional IOL was implanted. As a result, they still had to wear eyeglasses for their astigmatism even though they may have had perfect distance vision. Toric intraocular lenses (IOL) are created to not only fix your distance vision just like the traditional IOL’s, but the Toric IOL also corrects astigmatism.
Technology has come very far in just a short time. No longer should your astigmatism keep you from wearing contact lenses instead of glasses, and no longer should you assume that if you need cataract surgery, your astigmatism will always be an issue.
