Can one eye be corrected for distance and one for near vision?
Yes. This is called monovision. Some patients wear contact lenses with these different prescriptions on purpose to eliminate the need for reading glasses. The one distinct disadvantage of monovision is the loss of fine depth perception. This is necessary to do some athletic activities and, for some people, to feel comfortable driving a car or walking down a flight of stairs. If you want to consider this option, we prefer to have you wear glasses mimicking this for two weeks prior to surgery to see if you actually like monovision. For those patients with 2 diopters or less of myopia, one eye can be treated with refractive surgery and the other eye left alone to be used for comfortable reading. People with greater amounts of myopia can have one eye intentionally under corrected for reading vision.
