My friend has hyperopia in one eye and myopia in the other. Unusual. Anyone with info or advice?

Question

She is Chinese, 21 years old, otherwise quite healthy. I am not sure if this is a very rare condition. I am also not sure if she is getting good advice in China - she was told only that she could wear glasses to relax her eyes if she wants. A search on Google gave info on either myopia or hyperopia, but nothing about having one in each eye. I would like to pass on to her any useful ideas that may be generated from this query. Thanks.

Answer 1

Her refractive error is known as antimetropia.  As far as I know, it's pretty rare but shouldn't be a problem.  Glasses and contacts should be able to correct her vision.  If the prescriptions in her two eyes are very different, it can be hard to get equal image sizes on the retinas.  A good optometrist or optician should be able to correct it, though.

Answer 2

Glasses will balance her vision out.

Answer 3

I have it.  I'd say at the worst, it's annoying sometimes, and my depth perception is not the best.  It's not like I run into things or anything, but I can definitely notice that mine is not as good as other peoples' with regular vision.  I also find it's more challenging to drive at night.  My night vision is okay, but I find it a bit more problematic to drive when there's not as much light.

I work at a computer all day, and I would advise that she not do any one thing like that with her eyes for long periods without any breaks.  What I do is every once in a while get up, walk around, look out the window, look at anything that is a different distance away than my computer screen.

Actually, my eye doctor said that I would appreciate this as my eyes age.  At a time when most people are getting into bifocals, I will be able to go a little bit longer without them because of this condition.