Signs and Symptoms of Refractive Errors

Signs and Symptoms of Refractive Errors

• 09 Mar, 2023

Refractive errors are eye disorders that affect the eye’s ability to refract or bend light. This makes it difficult for the eye to focus on what it is seeing. Depending on the type of refractive error, you may struggle all the time or only in specific situations.

The severity of the error determines how much it will affect your vision. Mild errors may hardly affect your sight at all, while severe errors may leave you unable to live a normal life without vision correction. can have a refractive error in one or both eyes. When an error is present in both eyes, it may not be equally severe in both. You can also have different refractive errors in each of your eyes.

Each type of refractive error is different, but they all make it hard to see clearly. The signs and symptoms of these refractive errors varies with the types of refractive errors which includes hyperopia(farsightedness), myopia(shortsighted), astigmatism, presbyopia anisometropia and antimetropia.

In myopia, far objects look blurry. People with myopia are usually born with it and sometimes, tend to progress as one ages. Kids born with this may complain of inability to see the board clearly when seated few meters away from the board or at the back of the class. Severe nearsightedness (also called high myopia) can increase the risk of other eye conditions, like retinal detachment (when the retina is pulled away from its normal position) and glaucoma.

People with hyperopia often find out that nearby objects appear blurry associated with frontal headaches after doing close tasks such as reading, writing or computer work, squinting to see clearly, inability to read for long periods of time due to eye strain, burning eyes and aching in or around the eyes.

Presbyopia is the gradual loss of your eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects. It's a natural, often annoying part of aging which becomes noticeable in your early to mid-40s and continues to worsen until around age 65. You may become aware of presbyopia when you start holding books and newspapers farther (at arm's length) to be able to read them or when you find it difficult to thread a needle. Other symptoms are blurred vision at normal reading distance, eye strain or headache after reading or doing close-up work.

Anisometropia happens if vision in one eye is very different than vision in the other eye due to difference in the amount of refractive errors in each eye. Symptoms may include double vision (diplopia), blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, eye pain or discomfort andpoor depth perception.