Selecting Glasses
Well-designed frames and lenses provide protection for your natural eye and at the same time help camouflage your prosthetic eye.
We recommend progressive lenses because they enable you to read, watch TV and drive without taking them off. This means full time protection for your good eye.
We do not recommend transitional lenses. These lenses get darker in the sunlight and lighten up indoors – the problem is that they take too long to change – you are better off with sun glasses where you know where you are.
Here are some tips when selecting your glasses:
- Stay within the fashion trends of the day. Odd looking or old fashioned glasses draw attention to your eyes. This is what we are trying to avoid.
- Choose high impact safety lenses and frames.
- Choose larger, rather than smaller lens sizes. The main camouflage effect of glasses is achieved through light reflecting off the surface of your lenses so the bigger the surface, the more you hide. This is especially true, if the upper eyelid on your anophthalmic side is more sunken than over your natural eye.
- Glasses with broad side arms will provide more cover than narrow side arms (again, within the boundaries of current fashions).
- Try to ensure the side arms are placed high up relative to the frame – you don’t want your good eye to be blinkered when looking sideways.
- Use the same prescription for your lenses as if you can see out of both eyes, except::
a. If your prosthetic eye is smaller than your natural eye, you may benefit from lenses that magnify your anophthalmic side slightly more than your natural side.
b. Conversely, slightly less magnification will reduce the apparent size of your prosthetic eye if it is too large.