Double vision in left eye (Diplopia)
1. General: Double Vision (Diplopia) symptoms rarely improve by themselves. They are likely to remain the same or to gradually worsen over time. They should be diagnosed and treated promptly, both to stop or reverse diseases that may be cause – or simply for the patient’s comfort and convenience if the cause is misconvergence of the two eyes.
2. Convergence Problems:
A. If the eyes are so badly misconverged that they appear to others to be either turned inward, “crossed”, or to be turned outward, “wall-eyed”,then surgical correction is likely to be needed, by an ophthalmologist.
B. If the double vision is due to misconvergence that is minor (so that the eyes do not appear abnormal to bystanders), then eyeglass correction may be helpful.
NOTE: Even after eye muscle surgery, corrective eyeglasses may still be needed.
Traditional eyeglass lenses are usually ground to correct two types of refractive errors: (1) focal distance errors … such as nearsightedness or farsightedness; and/or (2) irregularities in the curvature of the cornea cylinder or astigmatism.
A third type correction is also possible. It is called: “prism correction.” This correction displaces the image slightly, up, down, left or right, or to any angle desired. This is actually position correction when applied to one eye – or convergence correction when applied in a coordinated way to both eyes.
Patients having Diplopia are usually tested with trial lenses in the eye doctor’s office. Some ophthalmologists take the time to do this testing themselves, and then they write eyeglass prescriptions that can be filled by any optical dispenser. Many Doctors of Optometry (optometrists) also refract and evaluate patients for convergence error correction, and make, dispense and fit the eyeglasses, themselves.
Prescription eyeglasses having prism correction are usually perfectly normal looking and not noticed as being different by others. For patients who use bifocal, trifocal or variable focus lenses, the prism corrections can usually be added so that the eyeglasses provide full fusion at all distances, through all
of the lenses segments. A few people may need different prism correction near and far, and so may need separate eyeglasses, each with different prism corrections, for reading and distance vision.
Prescription eyeglasses with prism for convergence correction can be made as sunglasses when this is desired.