Prism Correction For Double Vision

Also known as diplopia, double vision is when you see two separate images or overlapping images. A common cause of double vision is strabismus, a condition where one or more of the six muscles that control your eye movements do not coordinate correctly with the other muscles. When this happens you may experience trouble with focus, eye fatigue, limited depth perception, and double vision. The American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus estimates that 4% of the American population has some form of strabismus.

Strabismus hampers the ability of the brain to fuse the two images that your eyes see into one coherent 3D image, causing one of your eyes to look at a different image than the other. The terms that describe the directions in which your eyes point relative to center gaze are “tropia” and “phoria.”

Below are common tropias and phorias, and what they mean for one or both eyes:

The most commonly prescribed way of alleviating eye muscle imbalance that leads to double vision is prism correction. When adding corrective prisms to your lenses they are incorporated into the lens material. While you may not see a physical difference in the lens, your brain will process the image shift the prism creates and fuse the images from your eyes together into one cohesive whole.

Vision therapy is another treatment to help resolve binocular vision problems, where the patient goes through vision exercises to improve abilities such as eye teaming and focusing, often in conjunction with using eyeglasses containing prism. Eye surgery may be needed if prism and/or vision therapy are not able to sufficiently resolve the binocular vision issues.