I’m often asked by my non-ophthalmology friends, “I am near sighted, and I also have astigmatism. My eye doctor tells me that my eye is shaped like a football instead of a basketball. I sort of get it, but what does that mean? Am I deformed?”

Indeed, this explanation captures the essence of the problem, but for most people, having astigmatism does not mean that you have been cursed with a football-shaped eye.  For those my Chinese readers, astigmatism is written as, “散光”. (Mandarin: sǎn guāng; Cantonese: saan2 gwong1)

Again, for MOST people, astigmatism is a condition OFTEN completely correctable with contact lenses, glasses, or refractive surgery, assuming that there are not other underlying issues in your eyes.

In order for the eye to transmit a clear image of what is in front of us to our brain, light travelling into our eye must be focused directly onto the retina.  There are many conditions that can prevent light from reaching the retina, and astigmatism is one of them.  For most issues, astigmatism involves the cornea, a clear structure in the front of the eye that is responsible for bending light entering the eye onto the retina.  For those of use that are near-sighted (myopic), light is focused in front of the retina. For far-sighted folks (hyperopic), light is focused behind the retina (optically speaking). When we visualize this system in the two or three dimensional planes, light at different axes can be bent at different angles, resulting in a variable focus onto the retina. This is astigmatism.

One can have myopia or hyperopia with astigmatism. These two categories are not mutually exclusive.  Your ophthalmologist can accurately diagnose astigmatism and offer treatment recommendations.

medicine ophthalmology