Soft bifocal contact lenses for patients with nearpoint asthenopia

Bifocal contact lenses have generally been considered solely for the presbyopic population. However, pre-presbyopic individuals with accommodative or vergence disorders who respond favorably to plus lenses at near may be good candidates for bifocal contact lenses. A group of ten non-presbyopic patients who manifest accommodative dysfunctions or near point esophoria were fit with the Ciba BI-SOFT contact lenses. Nearpoint accommodative and vergence findings were evaluated through both near point plus spectacle lenses and the bifocal soft lenses. Results indicate that the BI-SOFT bifocal contact lens was effective in changing the near point visual posture. However, poor distance vision acuity due to ghost images reduced the subjective success rate of the BI-SOFT lens on this non-presbyopic population.