High hyperopia is a significant level of farsightedness, a refractive error where light focuses to a point behind the retina instead of directly on it. This misalignment makes it difficult for the eye’s lens to bring near objects into sharp focus. While mild farsightedness might only affect near vision, high hyperopia can cause objects at all distances to appear blurry.
Symptoms and Associated Conditions
The signs of high hyperopia manifest differently depending on a person’s age. Adults often experience persistent eye strain, headaches, and blurred vision when looking at nearby objects, which can extend to distant objects in severe cases. This strain is caused by the constant effort of the eye’s muscles to focus, making tasks like reading or computer work challenging.
In children, symptoms are more about observable behaviors than reported blurriness. Young children can accommodate, or adjust their focus, to overcome moderate farsightedness, which can mask the problem. With high hyperopia, this effort is extreme, and parents might notice a child squinting, lacking interest in reading, or developing an inward-turning eye (accommodative esotropia).
If uncorrected, this intense focusing effort in children can lead to long-term vision problems. The two most significant associated conditions are strabismus (misaligned eyes) and amblyopia (lazy eye). Amblyopia can develop when the brain receives a consistently blurry image from one eye and begins to favor the stronger eye.
Causes and Diagnosis
The causes of high hyperopia are anatomical and present from birth. The condition results from the eyeball being structurally shorter than average (a short axial length) or the cornea being flatter than normal. High hyperopia also has a strong hereditary component and frequently runs in families.
Diagnosing high hyperopia requires a comprehensive eye examination. While a standard vision test can indicate farsightedness, a more thorough process is needed to determine its severity, especially in children. The definitive diagnostic procedure is a cycloplegic refraction, where special eye drops temporarily paralyze the muscles that control the eye’s ability to focus.
This procedure is important for young patients, as their ability to unconsciously focus can hide the full extent of their farsightedness. The drops ensure the eye is in a resting state, allowing the examiner to measure the true refractive error. This measurement, expressed in diopters, determines the power of the corrective lenses needed, with high hyperopia classified as a prescription of +5.25 diopters or greater.
Treatment Options
The most common treatment for high hyperopia is eyeglasses. For children, wearing glasses full-time is a preventative measure that allows the brain to receive clear images from both eyes, supporting normal vision development and helping prevent amblyopia and strabismus. For adults, glasses relieve the associated eye strain and headaches. High-index materials can make the strong lenses needed for high hyperopia thinner and lighter.
Contact lenses are another effective option, offering a wider field of view than glasses. They can be preferred for active individuals or for cosmetic reasons. Proper fitting and hygiene are necessary to ensure comfort and eye health.
Surgical interventions are available but are more complex than those for nearsightedness. Standard laser procedures like LASIK are often not suitable for high degrees of farsightedness. For some adults, more invasive procedures may be considered, such as implanting a phakic intraocular lens (IOL) or performing a refractive lens exchange (RLE), which replaces the eye’s natural lens with an artificial one.