Reading glasses,
made optional.
Somewhere in your forties, near focus starts to fade and the menu drifts to arm’s length. It’s called presbyopia — and there are now real ways to reduce, or end, your reliance on readers.
The natural lens
simply stiffens.
Presbyopia isn’t a disease — it’s a normal part of getting older. The flexible lens inside your eye gradually loses its ability to change shape, so focusing up close takes more effort and eventually a pair of readers. Standard laser vision correction sharpens distance, but it doesn’t address presbyopia on its own. The good news: a handful of presbyopia-specific approaches can give you a comfortable range of vision again — near, intermediate, and far.
Two roads —
the cornea, or the lens.
Presbyopia can be addressed on the surface of the eye with a laser — part of our cornea-based UltraView FREEDOM program — or inside the eye by replacing the lens, through our lens-based UltraView VISION program. Which path fits depends on your prescription, your eyes, and where you are in life.
A refined laser treatment that extends the depth of focus in each eye and blends the two into one continuous range — near, through intermediate, to far. It goes well beyond simple monovision while keeping depth perception largely intact.
Best for: most presbyopes wanting a natural, glasses-light range without an internal procedure.
One eye is set for distance and the other for near, and the brain learns to favour whichever it needs. We let you trial the effect with contact lenses first, so you experience it before deciding.
Best for: those who already wear, and comfortably adapt to, monovision contacts.
The eye’s natural lens is replaced with an advanced multifocal or extended-depth lens implant — correcting presbyopia from inside the eye and removing any future cataract in the same step.
Best for: stronger prescriptions, or eyes approaching cataract age.
More on RLE →Not monovision.
Blended vision.
Traditional monovision asks each eye to do one job and lets the brain switch between them — which only some people adapt to comfortably. PRESBYOND uses a wavefront-guided treatment to gently extend each eye’s depth of focus, then overlaps them into a shared “blend zone.” The result is continuous, binocular vision rather than a hard switch — which is why more people tolerate it than conventional monovision, with depth perception largely preserved.
You’ll experience the result before you commit.
Because adapting to blended vision is personal, we often let you preview the effect with contact lenses during your assessment. There’s an adjustment period after treatment, and near vision won’t feel identical to your twenties — we’ll set honest, clear expectations so the result fits the life you actually live.
An honest starting point.
Only a full assessment can confirm what’s right for your eyes — but here’s the general shape of the decision.
As with all our laser procedures, every candidate is first screened for dry eye at the U Dry Eye Institute — it protects both your comfort and your result.
Good to know.
Can laser eye surgery fix presbyopia and reading vision?
Standard laser correction sharpens distance vision but doesn’t treat presbyopia on its own. Presbyopia-specific approaches can, though — chiefly laser blended vision (PRESBYOND) and monovision, which rebalance how your two eyes share near and distance focus, and refractive lens exchange, which replaces the lens inside the eye. Which one fits depends on your eyes and prescription.
What is PRESBYOND laser blended vision, and how is it different from monovision?
Both set your eyes to share near and distance work, but PRESBYOND goes further: a wavefront-guided treatment extends each eye’s depth of focus and overlaps them into a shared “blend zone,” giving continuous vision from near through intermediate to far rather than a hard switch between eyes. Because of that blend, it’s tolerated by more people than traditional monovision, and depth perception is largely preserved.
Will I still need reading glasses afterward?
The goal is to greatly reduce your dependence on readers — many people become glasses-free for everyday tasks. That said, no presbyopia treatment perfectly recreates the near vision of your twenties, and you may still reach for glasses for very fine print or long stretches of close work. We’ll set honest expectations for your eyes specifically.
Am I too old for laser blended vision?
There’s no strict upper age limit — healthy eyes and a stable prescription matter more than age. The key question at this stage of life is whether a cataract is beginning to form: if it is, replacing the lens (RLE, or UltraView VISION if it’s a true cataract) often makes more sense than treating the cornea. Your assessment sorts this out clearly.
What happens if I develop a cataract later?
Laser blended vision treats the cornea and leaves your options open: if a cataract develops years down the road, it can still be treated with lens surgery, just as it would be otherwise. If you’re already near cataract age, we may suggest going straight to a lens-based solution so you address both at once.
Is the result permanent?
The laser reshaping itself is permanent. Presbyopia is progressive, though, so near vision can continue to change gradually with age; a future fine-tuning or, eventually, a lens-based procedure can address that. We’ll talk through the long view at your consultation.
Ready to put the
readers down?
Your assessment is a thorough, honest conversation about which presbyopia approach truly fits your eyes — laser blended vision, monovision, or a lens exchange. No pressure, no sales pitch.