You have A STIGMATA?!?!?!

It has come to my attention that many people think astigmatism is an eye disease or some horrible eye omen. Breath easy people, Astigmatism is not an Ocular Disease like Glaucoma or Macular Degeneration. It is a Visual Condition that in most cases has very little to do with the actual state of how healthy your eyes are.

Astigmatism is just a word that basically describes how your eye focuses light. How your eye focuses light is greatly determined by the shape of your eye. So, when your eye doctor tells you that you have astigmatism, they are basically saying that your eye isn’t perfectly round like a basketball, and is more like the shape of a football, therefore when light enters your eye, it is not focused properly. In fact, an astigmatic eye, focuses the light into several different spots on the back of your eye, causing you to see things blurry.

That means to get you to see the best, the glasses or contacts have to be designed to correct these incorrectly focused spots of light.
Because astigmatic eyes have different curvatures, like the tip of a football, the glasses/contacts require more than one power. A common example of this type of Rx would be -2.00-1.00×90 D. The numbers in red are the extra correction for the extra curves of your eye. If your eye was perfectly round, the glasses/contacts would only require one power. A common example of this type of Rx would be -2.00 D.

Even though the word astigmatism sounds like you have a “stigma” or a really bad eye condition, do not worry. Astigmatism is not a horrible eye disease, in fact, you now know that it really is just a word describing how your eye focuses light!

Park Slope Eye is located in Brooklyn, NY.  For more info contact Justin Bazan, OD, the optometrist of Park Slope Eye, at Dr.Bazan@ParkSlopeEye.com or visit www.ParkSlopeEye.com Also, check us out on Yelp!, Twitter and FaceBook.