Contact Lenses for Astigmatism of a Positive Cylinder Value?
March 28th, 2010 | See the Top Answers to this Question Below
Hello,
I’m looking to buy contact lenses and i’ve heard i can get something to treat astigmatism as well. However, when i looked it up, i found all cylinder values are negative while mine (in the prescription) is positive (+0.50) – any idea?
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There are two forms of writing a prescription, either negative cylinder or positive cylinder. Your prescription is written as positive cylinder. It can be transposed to the negative form. To ensure accuracy, ask an optician or their staff to do this for you, but basically, all you have to do is:
1 – add the sphere and cylinder together to give you the new sphere
2 – change the cylinder to -0.50
3- change the axis by either adding or subtracting 90 to give you a new number which is between 0 and 180.
To be honest, if you just have 0.50 astigmatism. then contact lenses for astigmatism will provide you little or no benefit in comparison to spherical lenses.
Also, you need to go to see an optician to be fitted for contact lenses first anyway. You cannot just buy them online without a valid prescription, you will need additional measurements for the shape and size of the lens too. They will give you your exact contact lens prescription once you have had an appointment to be fitted with them
Ummm….I don’t know anything about positive/negative cylinder values. I do, however, have contact lenses that are specifically for astigmatism. If you’re astigmatic, they’re much better than normal lenses, visionwise, but more difficult to handle because they’re weighted at the bottom. Ask your optometrist to help you. They’ll know your prescription already, and trial lenses are usually free.
Fax your prescription to 541-267-4052 for an interpretation, and quote.
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