How Prism Lenses Can Help in Vision Therapy

What Are Prism Lenses?

Most patients who need eyeglasses to address nearsightedness or farsightedness are prescribed spherical and cylindrical lenses. Both provide patients with perfect focus by correcting for refractive errors so light reaches its destination: the retina.

Some people, however, require prism lenses. That’s because their binocular vision — the eyes working together to focus on a single object or image — is not well developed. When the eyes don’t focus in tandem, an object seen by one eye may appear higher, lower, or to the right or left of its actual location, leading to double vision.

Prism lenses address double vision by bending light rays onto the retina. This allows the eye to perceive the object as a single image and in its rightful place while also correcting for refractive errors.

Vision Therapy Using Prism Lenses

Prisms are an integral part of vision therapy, which consists of customized exercises and lenses to improve visual processing by retraining the brain and eyes to work together. Prisms improve patients’ depth perception and spatial perception.

If you experience imbalance and depth-perception problems following an illness or head injury, schedule an appointment with any of our great doctors at The Solution Center to discuss how vision therapy involving prisms might help. During the therapy sessions any of our great doctors at The Solution Center will fit you with prism glasses, provide instruction, and ask what you are seeing and experiencing. These responses will provide our doctors with valuable information on the prisms’ effectiveness.

To test your balance and depth perception, you might be asked to walk to a wall or down the office’s corridor or to hold an object and look at the top of it from an arm’s length distance. While walking or holding the object, your peripheral vision might be tested by identifying objects on either side while keeping your head steady. Another balance/coordination exercise could involve looking straight ahead while slowly walking, step by step, toe to heel.

Vision therapy employs a combination of prisms of various strengths. The lenses and the exercises stimulate your brain, gradually developing a stronger eye-brain connection. Your eyes will learn to work together again to regain clear and comfortable vision. This, in turn, will lead to improved balance and coordination, even when prisms are no longer used.

At The Vision Therapy Center at The Solution Center of Professional VisionCare we will gladly answer your questions about the role prism lenses play in vision therapy. The Vision Therapy Center at The Solution Center of Professional VisionCare offers vision therapy to patients in Westerville, Johnstown, Northeast Columbus, and throughout Ohio.

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